New Delhi

A building which houses the Union Minority Affairs Ministry and other government offices here will now be known as Deendayal Antyodaya Bhawan, an official statement said today.

The Union Urban Development Ministry has decided to rename the building, located in Central Government Offices (CGO) complex here, after Union Minority Affairs Minister Najma Heptulla made a suggestion to honour BJP ideologue Deendayal Upadhyay.

The NDA government’s decision to rechristen the building comes in the wake of renaming of Aurangzeb Road in the national capital as APJ Abdul Kalam road last year and the changing of the names of Gurgaon and Mewat districts as ‘Gurugram’ and ‘Nuh’, respectively, in the BJP-ruled Haryana.

“On the suggestion of Najma Heptulla, the Ministry of Urban Development has taken the decision to rename Paryavaran Bhawan, CGO Complex, New Delhi as Deendayal Antyodaya Bhawan,” the statement said.

In his letter to Heptulla, Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu has directed CPWD to take steps to rename the building “immediately” in consultation with the Ministry of Minority Affairs, it said.

Heptulla had in her letter of March 15 suggested to the UD Ministry to rechristen the building after Upadhyay “who evolved the idea of Antyodaya”.

“This being his birth centenary year it is only appropriate that an important building in the national capital is named after him,” the statement quoted Heptulla as saying in the letter.

The Ministry of Environment, which was previously housed in the Paryavaran Bhawan in CGO complex, now has its own separate building called Indira Paryavaran Bhawan located in Jor Bagh.

PTI