LUCKNOW: In a major saffron development, Yogi Adityanath –led-government passed an order on Governor Ram Naik's recommendation, to officially introduce word ‘Ramji’ as the middle name of Dr BR Ambedkar in all documents and records in the state on Wednesday night.

Passing the order, the state government directed all departments and the High Court benches in Lucknow and Allahabad to replace ‘Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar’ in all documents and records with ‘Dr Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar’, as signed by the leader himself on the pages of Constitution of India, The New Indian Express reported.

While the spelling of Ambedkar in English will continue unchanged, the spelling in Hindi will change so that his name is pronounced ‘Aambedkar’. Dr Lalji Prasad Nirmal, director of the Babasahib Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar Mahasabha, said that the campaign had been initiated by Governor Ram Naik in December 2017, who had written to Prime minister Narendra Modi, CM Yogi Adityanath and also the Mahasabha, in January expressing the call for to spell Ambedkar appropriately and asked him to issue directions for its correction.

“Ramji was the name of DR Ambedkar and as per the practice in Maharashtra a person’s father’s name is used as his/ her middle name,” he said.

UP government had then passed an ordinance to pronounce Ambedkar’s name correctly written in government records.

In his letter issuing the directions, Jitendra Kumar, principal secretary, general administration department, has said that taking cognizance of the 8th schedule of the Indian Constitution, where Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar’s name is written as Dr Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, the government has “directed the authorities concerned to approve the name in all records, documents related to the government.”