Amid speculation that the Union government is planning to omit the name ‘India’ from the Constitution, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s placard at the opening of the G20 summit in Delhi on Saturday, September 9, used the name ‘Bharat’. This was possibly the first time that the name ‘Bharat’ was used on the card displaying the nation’s name at a global summit instead of the usual practice of displaying the name ‘India’. The official access badges and G20 posters too used the name Bharat, and the term India was conspicuously absent on some of the material displayed at the two-day summit being held at Bharat Mandapam in Delhi. 

Last week, a dinner invite to be hosted by President Droupadi Murmu during the G20 summit was sent out to various world leaders in the name of ‘President of Bharat’, instead of the usual ‘President of India’. This triggered a row, with Opposition leaders claiming that the BJP-led Union government wanted to ‘change’ the nation’s name from India to Bharat, because of the I.N.D.I.A. bloc of parties choosing the same name for their alliance.

While declaring the G20 summit open in Delhi on Saturday, PM Modi sat behind a display board that said ‘Bharat’. Speaking in Hindi, he said, “Bharat welcomes the delegates as the President of G20.”

Read: Can the government really remove the name ‘India’? What the Constitution says

There have been reports of the Union government planning to introduce a Bill to omit the name ‘India’ from the Constitution in an upcoming special session of the Parliament. The Narendra Modi-led Union government has said that it wants to ‘liberate’ Indians from ‘colonial baggage’ through moves such as renaming Rajpath as Kartavya Path and adopting a new Naval Ensign.