Chennai: The Tamil Nadu Assembly today adopted a unanimous resolution urging the Centre to rename the Madras High Court as Tamilnadu High Court, instead of Chennai High Court, and to make necessary changes in the Bill introduced in Parliament seeking to rename it as Chennai High Court.

The resolution comes in the wake of the High Courts (Alteration of Names) Bill, 2016, introduced in the Lok Sabha on July 19, seeking to rename the Bombay, Kolkata, and Madras High Courts. The Bill proposed to rename the Madras High Court as Chennai High Court. Referring to the resolution adopted in the Assembly on July 18, 1967, seeking to rename Madras State, as mentioned in the Constitution, as Tamilnadu, Jayalalithaa pointed out that, following this, an Act was passed in the Parliament in 1968, and the state was renamed as Tamilnadu on January 14, 1969. Madras was renamed as Chennai in 1996.

‘The word Chennai denotes only the Chennai city. Since the Madras High Court serves the entire state of Tamilnadu, and since other High Courts are named after their respective states following the 1956 creation of states on linguistic basis, and considering the fact that a Bench of the Madras High Court is functioning in Madurai, it would be inappropriate to rename it as Chennai High Court’, she added.

The resolution urged the Centre to make necessary changes in the Bill.

Jayalalithaa followed the resolution up with a letter to the Prime Minister, urging him to take immediate action in this regard.