Did Supreme Court pass a judgement retaining ‘Bharat’ and excluding ‘India’ from country name?
A viral post across various social media platforms states that Supreme Court has passed a judgement retaining only Bharat as country name and excluded India.
Claims: The viral post claims that the name – Bharat, instead of India, would now be used in all governmental, public and personal domains. Few of such posts also claim that this rule would be active from 15th June 2021.
A Brijesh Tiwari shared a similar post on Facebook and claimed that from June 15th, Bharat would be India’s only name. Tiwari goes on to mention that India would be called Bharat, regardless of the language. He added #SupremeCourt towards the end of his post, indicating that this was an official decision taken by the Supreme Court. However, he later took it down. The archive of the post is available here.
Another related post went viral on Facebook, back in June 2020. It is archived here.
The alleged Supreme Court judgement was also heavily shared on Twitter back then.
बधाई हो भारत के सभी नागरिकों को
आचार्य गुरुवर श्री विद्यासागर जी महाराज जी का सपना साकार हुआ
*इंडिया नही भारत बोलो*15 जून से भारत का नाम हर भाषा मे सिर्फ भारत रहेगा–सुप्रीम कोर्ट
Congratulations. 💐💐💐@AmanChopra_ @Swamy39 @sambitswaraj @sudhirchaudhary @TarekFatah— S. K. Tripathi (@sktripathi1) June 9, 2020
बधाई हो भारत के सभी नागरिकों को
*इंडिया नही भारत बोलो*
15 जून से भारत का नाम हर भाषा मे सिर्फ भारत रहेगा–सुप्रीम कोर्ट Congratulations. 💐💐💐
@ShikshaBajpai26 @MUKULTIWARI5 @Arvind_Rimha @rulesh_kumar @1ndian_ak47 @AnjaliDubey66 @freesou54440187 @Anurags07768806 @legal_shiv— #अभिलाष दीक्षित-गुरु कनपुरिया【__कanपुरिया_भौkaल_】 (@abhilashdixit7) June 6, 2020
Truth
There is no such announcement to discontinue the name ‘India’ and start using ‘Bharat’.
The story emerged in 2020 when a Delhi-based man filed a PIL seeking an amendment to Article 1 of the Constitution. In his petition, he requested to retain only “Bharat” and exclude India from the country name. He claimed that such an amendment would “ensure the citizens of this country to get over the colonial past.”
The Supreme Court called the petition for hearing on 3rd June 2020. In its verdict, the bench headed by Chief Justice S A Bobde refused the petitioner’s plea as “India is already called Bharat, in the Constitution itself.” As for the part of the plea to exclude the usage of the name India, the court allowed the petitioner to make a representation to the government. Record of proceedings of the hearing is available here.
Several news websites published stories about Supreme Court’s judgement refusing the petition.
Some of these articles can be read here and here.
When the post went viral in 2020, SMHoaxSlayer proved it to be fake in a fact check. Apart from the June 2020 judgement, there has been no noted development in the case since then.
Supreme Court has not ruled in favour of ‘India’ being called ‘Bharat’ in all languages
Recently, the fact-checking organization Factly also debunked this fake news.
