Cuttack, April 7: The 115-year-old Janakinath Bhavan, which was converted into the Netaji Birth Place Museum recently, has been dragged into a controversy as city group, Netaji Subhas Smruti Parishad, has raised objections to the Bhavan’s new name.

The Parishad has demanded that the museum’s name be changed and has sought judicial intervention into the matter. Parishad president Sunil Kumar Ray and secretary Dhruba Charan Sahu have filed a petition in Orissa High Court seeking direction to change the name to “Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Memorial Museum”.

The state’s department of culture was developing Janakinath Bhavan into a memorial museum in collaboration with the Union government by constituting a museum trust.

Sunil Kumar Ray, the president of Netaji Subhas Smruti Parishad, stressed: “We felt that the name was inappropriate. We don’t want to offend any one, but to drop his family name and use Netaji, a designated name instead, runs contrary to the significance of the Bhavan.”

“The mansion has a special significance as its Bose’s birth place. Hence, the name bestowed on him by his father and mother should find place in the museum’s name,” said the freedom fighter in his 80s.

The government, however, is irritated by the hullabaloo. A senior official of the culture department said: “I cannot believe that people have so much time to rake up trivial issues. No Indian should be offended by the name ‘Netaji’.”

A spokesperson for the museum’s trust said: “Janakinath Bhavan was converted to the Netaji Birth Place Museum to commemorate Bose’s contributions. To suggest that is ‘offensive’ is to misunderstand the spirit behind it.”

The ancestral house of Bose at Oriya Bazaar was handed over to the government in 1954, along with a portion of land, by Netaji’s aunt Bibhabati Bose before the family shifted to Calcutta.