Orissa Now Odisha, Oriya is Odia

NEW DELHI :After approval of the amendment bill by Parliament, Orissa is calling as “Odisha” and the Oriya language as Odia.

The Rajya Sabha passed the Orissa bill for name alternation which was the 113th Amendment Bill after a brief debate with MPs. Some members called it as ‘historic’, others from BJP and Congress parties blamed Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik for not concentrating on the main issues of the state.

Some news channels termed it as ‘Another Unnecessary Name Change’.

Orissa, in the east of India, was adopted as state name when it entered the Indian Union in 1950. However, in the local language, the name was pronounced slightly differently, as Udisa. There are also some phonetic issues with certain clarity of English letters, and rather similar to Japanese pronunciations of the letters r and l with the use of English becoming awkward for some.

The BJP have based their name change on 15th century records which refers to the land of the Oriya people as being named Udisa or Odisa.However, in Tantric literature it is referred to as Udisantha, while the ancient poet Sarala Das mentions the land as being called Odra Rastra.

Bhubaneswar: Orissa has been renamed Odisha after President Pratibha Patil approved the State Assembly’s 2008 resolution on 4th November 2011.

The language Oriya will now be called Odia.

Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has declared a holiday on Saturday to mark this ‘historic’ date.

“To celebrate this historic decision, Saturday will be a holiday for all schools, all colleges and all state government offices in Odisha,” Patnaik said.

Sweets were distributed among those present at the celebrations, organised at short notice following instruction from Patnaik.

Earlier an unanimous resolution was passed in the state assembly for change in the name of the state from Orissa to Odisha in 2008 which received the nod of both the houses of Parliament in 2010.

The President’s assent and notification was issued on Friday.

The state which was formed on linguistic basis on April 1, 1936, was known as Orissa and its language was Oriya since then.