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Andhra Pradesh BJP president PVN Madhav has called for renaming the Jinnah Tower in Guntur to do away with ‘oppressive and colonial history.’ The Jinnah Tower is a pre-Independence construction named after Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan.
Addressing the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) cadre on Tuesday, August 5, in Guntur, Madhav said that names and symbols should align with the ‘spirit of modern and unified India.’
This is not the first time the BJP has raised the issue of changing the name of the tower. In February 2022, the Jinnah Tower was painted in the national tricolours by the Guntur Municipal Corporation (GMC).
Objecting to the use of Jinnah’s name for a major city centre in Andhra Pradesh, the state unit of the BJP had demanded that the tower be renamed in honour of former president APJ Abdul Kalam or culturally important persons or freedom fighters from the Guntur district, like Telugu poet Gurram Jashuva.
It was on the heels of this controversy that authorities from the ruling YSRCP, along with the Guntur Municipal Corporation, painted the tower in the tricolours of the national flag.