Supreme Court has not passed any judgement to rename India as ‘Bharat’ in all languages - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
May 26, 2021
A post is being circulated on social media claiming that the Supreme Court of India (SCI) has recently passed a judgement to rename India as ‘Bharat’ in all the languages. This post claim that the Supreme Court’s orders to rename the country as ‘Bharat’, will come into force from 15 June 2021. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: The Supreme Court of India had ordered the Centre to rename India as ‘Bharat’ in all languages from 15 June 2021.
Fact: In May 2020, a writ petition was filed in the Supreme Court of India (SCI) to change the name of the country from India to ‘Bharat’. A bench headed by CJI SA Bobde had refused to pass any directions to amend the constitution for such name change. The Supreme Court had reiterated in their judgement that India is already called ‘Bharat’ in the constitution. The Supreme Court had said that the writ petition should be treated as a representation and asked the Centre to take a decision on it. Supreme Court hasn’t passed any verdict in favour of renaming the country. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
When we searched to check whether the Supreme Court of India (SCI) had taken up such a plea to rename the country as ‘Bharat’, we found out that in May 2020, the Supreme Court of India had granted a hearing on a writ petition to change the name of the country from India to Bharat. The petitioner had sought an amendment to Article 1 of the constitution of India to the extent of altering the name of India to ‘Bharat’.
On 02 June 2020, a bench headed by CJI SA Bobde had refused to pass any directions to amend the constitution for such name change of the country. The Supreme Court had disposed of the writ petition.
The Supreme Court had reiterated in their judgement that India is already called ‘Bharat’ in the constitution. The Supreme Court had said that the writ petition should be treated as a representation and asked the Centre to take a decision on it. The Supreme Court had not pronounced a verdict in favour of the name change of the country. News articles published on the Supreme Court judgement can be read here and here.
In 2020, when a similar message was shared on social media, FACTLY published a fact-check article on it. It can be seen here. ‘The Times of India’ had also published a fact-check article about this fake message in June 2020.
To sum it up, the Supreme Court had not passed any judgement to rename the country as Bharat in all languages from 15 June 2021.