The Union Cabinet, headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has approved the proposal to rename the state of Kerala as ‘Keralam’.
After approval by the Union Cabinet, the President of India will refer a bill, namely the Kerala State (Change of Name) Bill, 2026, to the Kerala Legislative Assembly for expression of its views under the proviso to Article 3 of the Constitution of India. After receiving the views of the Kerala Legislative Assembly, the Government of India will take further action and the President’s recommendation to introduce the Kerala (Change of Name) Bill, 2026 to change the name of the state ‘Kerala’ to ‘Keralam’ will be sought in Parliament.
The name change comes ahead of the Assembly elections in the state, the dates of which are yet to be announced by the Election Commission of India (ECI).
In 2023 and 2024, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan moved the decision to change the name from ‘Kerala’ to ‘Keralam’ in all languages listed in the Eighth Schedule of the country’s constitution. The resolution was passed twice by the Council, after the Union Home Ministry, after reviewing the first resolution, proposed some technical changes.
The resolutions moved by the Kerala government sought to change the name of the state from Kerala to ‘Keralam’ under Article 3 of the Constitution of India.
Read also: Rename ‘Veer Bal Diwas’ to ‘Sahibzade Shaheedi Diwas’, MP Kang urges Center
“The name of our state is ‘Kerala’ in Malayalam. The states were formed on the basis of language on the first day of November, 1956. Kerala Biravi Day also falls on the first day of November. Since the time of struggle for national independence, there has been a strong demand for the formation of a united state of Kerala for the people who speak the Malayalam language. But in the First Schedule of the Constitution the name of our state has been recorded as ‘Kerala’. This Assembly unanimously appeals to the Central Government to take urgent steps in accordance with Article 3 of the Constitution to amend the name to “Keralam”.
In 2016, when the name of Gurgaon was changed to Gurugram, the RSS proposed that the Union government rename Kerala to ‘Keralam’, Ahmedabad to ‘Amaravati’, Hyderabad to ‘Bhagyanagar’ and Aurangabad to ‘Sampajinagar’.
Gurgaon was changed to Gurugram in honor of Guru Dronacharya, a teacher in the epic Mahabharata, who acquired the land in exchange for a fee from his disciples.
