The Kerala Assembly on Monday unanimously passed a resolution to change the state's name to 'Keralam' officially. The Assembly passed the resolution for the second time as some technical changes were suggested by the Union Home Ministry.
Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan, moved the resolution to change the state's name from 'Kerala' to 'Keralam' in all languages included in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of the country.
"The state is called 'Keralam' in Malayalam and there has been a demand to form a united Kerala for the Malayalam-speaking communities since the national freedom struggle. But the name of our state is written as Kerala in the First Schedule of the Constitution," he said.
This Assembly requests the Centre to take immediate steps to amend it as Keralam' under Article 3 of the Constitution and have it renamed as Keralam' in all the languages, Vijayan added.
Earlier, the Assembly passed the resolution in August last year and submitted it to the Centre. The resolution was accepted by both the ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF) and the opposition Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF). UDF legislator N Shamsudeen suggested some amendments to modify the structure of the resolution, which were rejected by the government later.
