Bareilly: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath announced that Mustafabad village in Lakhimpur Kheri district will be renamed Kabir Dham after learning that no Muslim families reside there. The declaration came during his visit to the Vishwa Kalyan Ashram, where he addressed the gathering at the Smriti Prakatotsav Mela.
Adityanath said he asked about the village’s name and community composition upon arrival. When told there were no Muslim families, he promised to rename it Kabir Dham. He directed local authorities to send a formal proposal for the change.
The Chief Minister linked the decision to what he called earlier distortions of heritage, claiming that names like Ayodhya and Prayagraj were once altered to “hurt religious sentiments.” He said the renaming is part of restoring “glorious heritage,” in line with the government’s earlier moves to rename Faizabad as Ayodhya and Allahabad as Prayagraj.
Mustafabad, located in Gola Gokaran Nath Tehsil, had a population of 495 according to the 2011 Census, spread across 77 families. The majority belong to Brahmin, Yadav, and Verma communities, with Scheduled Castes forming around 24 percent of the total. The population is projected to reach about 600 by 2026.
The announcement has drawn attention for explicitly linking the village’s new name to the absence of Muslims, raising questions over the communal undertones of such administrative decisions in Uttar Pradesh.
