Sunday, December 11 2005 20:28 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Gulbarga: If Bombay could become Mumbai, Madras Chennai and Calcutta Kolkata, could the country's IT hub, Bangalore lag behind.

Bangalore in anglicised form would be known Bengaluru, as pronounced in Kannada.

Chief Minister N Dharam Singh told reporters here today (Dec 11, 2005) that he had asked the Chief Secretary to take steps for renaming Bangalore.

He said Kannadigas were calling it as Bengaluru but taking an anglicised form, it became Bangalore.

Singh recalled that a suggestion to call the city as Bengaluru had emanated at a meeting of prominent Kannada literateurs he had called recently to seek their views on celebrating the golden jubilee of the formation of the state of Karnataka.

He also said he would make a plea to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to take steps to accord the status of a classical language to Kannada.

Singh said the State Government fully concurred with the views expressed by prominent litterateurs that Kannada should be given the classical language tag.