An Uttar Pradesh government body on Wednesday claimed that its website had been hacked after social media users flagged that it referred to famous poet Akbar Allahabadi as “Akbar Prayagraj”, PTI reported. The name was restored on Wednesday morning.
Syed Akbar Hussain, a 19-century poet used the pen name Akbar Allahabadi, as he was born in a town close to the Uttar Pradesh city. The Uttar Pradesh government had changed the name of the city of Allahabad to Prayagraj in October 2018.
On Tuesday, several social media users shared screenshots of a page on the Uttar Pradesh Higher Education Service Commission’s website that showed the pen names of him and two other poets – Tegh Allahabadi and Rashid Allahabadi – as “Pragyagraj”.
The names appeared under the “About Prayagraj” section on the website of Uttar Pradesh Higher Education Service Commission, an autonomous body under the state government.
Bharatiya Janata Party leader Rita Bahuguna Joshi said that the flub may have been a human error, “because one cannot change a person’s pen name like that”, The Print reported. Joshi is a professor of history at Allahabad University.
On Wednesday, the commission’s chairperson Ishwar Charan Vishvakarma told PTI that a complaint has been filed on the matter with the cyber cell of Prayagraj Police.
“It was evidently a handiwork of some miscreants expressing their apparent resentment over the change of name of Allahabad,” Vishvakarma said.
Several people on social media criticised the name change.
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