Haryana minister Anil Vij calls for removal of ‘Adhinayak’ word from National Anthem

AMBALA: Haryana Health Minister and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Anil Vij on Saturday demanded that the word ‘Adhinayak’ be removed from the National Anthem, as it means “dictator”.

 “Adhinayak word should also be removed (from National Anthem). ‘Adhinayak’ means dictator and in India, we do not have dictatorship but democracy,” the Haryana cabinet minister told ANI.

Vij’s statement comes a day after Congress MP Ripun Bora supported the private member’s resolution in Rajya Sabha seeking amendment of the National Anthem for replacing the word ‘Sindh’ with ‘Northeast’.

Yesterday, Bora called for replacing the word Sindh with the 'northeast' India saying, “The national anthem of India ‘Jana Gana Mana’ mentions Sindh which is no longer part of India; the northeast India, which is a very important part of India, finds no mention in the National Anthem.”

The National Anthem, ‘Jana Gana Mana’ was composed in Bengali by Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore in 1911. It was adopted in its Hindi version by the Constituent Assembly as the National Anthem of India on 24 January 1950.