Dudhwa National Park to be named after Ambedkar

LUCKNOW - The Dudhwa National Park, rated as the second largest wildlife reserve after the Corbett National Park, will soon be renamed as Baba Saheb Bhimrao Ambedkar National Park, a top government official said Saturday.

“A formal decision in this regard is awaited, but a proposal has been accepted in principle at the highest level,” said the Uttar Pradesh government official who wished to remain unidentified.

Asked about the reason to rename the park, the official said: “Actually Dudhwa was not named after anyone; it had got its name simply from the neighbourhood which used to be a huge ‘doodh mandi’ (milk wholesale market), therefore it was a fit case to be given a name and what could have been better than naming it after the architect of the Indian constitution.”

A few months ago, some wildlife enthusiasts had decided to urge the state government to name the park after Billy Arjan Singh, the wildlife conservationist who spent more than 60 years on the periphery of Dudhwa until his death in January last.

They had sought to justify that it was Singh’s efforts that led to declaration of the then 490 sq km forest as a wildlife sanctuary in 1977.

Later, the area was expanded taking into its fold the Kishunpur and Katarniya Ghat sanctuaries and elevated as a national wildlife park spread across an area of 860 sq km along the Uttar Pradesh-Nepal border.