Agartala: When the revolutionary Vladimir Lenin could not withstand the winds of change, did the scholarly Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels have any hope in hell?

Marx and Engels have been literally cast by the wayside in Agartala as Tripura's new chief minister and BJP star Biplab Kumar Deb prepares to shift to his official residence.

The road that leads to the chief minister's house was known as "Marx Engels Sarani" for the past 15 years - a legacy of the Left that used to rule Tripura unchallenged.

A week before Deb moves in, the name of the road has been changed to "Dr. Shyamaprasad Mukherjee Lane" in honour of Syama Prasad Mookerjee, who founded the Bharatiya Jana Sangh.

Unlike Lenin, whose statue was bulldozed and toppled in Tripura in a manner recalling his tumultuous past by a pro-BJP mob soon after the Assembly election results were announced, Marx and Engels were removed with the stroke of a pen befitting a democracy.

The treatment meted out to the Lenin statue had triggered an uproar and a reckless call by a BJP leader in Tamil Nadu had threatened to ignite flashpoints in parts of the country.

The road renaming order was issued by the urban development department, which is under the chief minister, on Monday. The department took care to ensure that the order was issued in four languages - English, Bengali, Hindi and the local Kokborok.

The "Marx Engels" plaque was replaced with the new one that mentions the name in the four languages on Tuesday.

The Left used to take vicarious pleasure in sending loaded messages through rechristening stunts.

In the late 1960s, the Left-run corporation in Calcutta had renamed Harrington Street after the Vietnam wartime leader Ho Chi Minh - just because the US consulate stands on the road. It is another matter that the US and Vietnam have moved on since then and have normalised their relations.

The heart of Calcutta has a Lenin Sarani, too, which has survived the fall of the Left and the rise of Mamata Banerjee.

Inheriting such a rich history, the Left did not let the Marx and Engels plaque be quietly consigned to the dustbin of the BJP's history.

CPM mouthpiece D aily Desher Katha said the name-change was "illegal" as any such decision was the prerogative of the municipal body. "The alliance government (BJP-IPFT) has changed the name illegally. Any road can be named after Dr. Shyamaprasad Mukherjee. But removing Marx and Engels was highly uncalled for," the mouthpiece wrote.

However, Agartala mayor Prafullajit Sinha said the right to rename a road in the civic area did not lie solely with the corporation. "If the government wants to change a road's name, it can do so," he said.

BJP state in-charge Sunil Deodhar said Marx and Engels "have done no good for the state.... The nationalist view will now come in all spheres of life".

The Congress introduced another element, wondering why the road was not renamed after any of the three previous chief ministers - Sachindra Lal Singha, Nripen Chakraborty and Manik Sarkar - who lived in the house.

"The BJP government is still under the influence of 'chalo paltai (let's change)' - its campaign slogan for the Assembly polls that were over in February," state Congress vice-president Tapas De said.