Finally, Varanasi has a railway station with its old name, Banaras. The fully renovated Manduadih railway station has been renamed as Banaras railway station.
The North Eastern Railway (NER) authorities have replaced the signboard with the new name of the station as Banaras.
NER's divisional railway manager (Varanasi) Vijay Kumar Panjiar said, "We received the final approval of railway board for the renaming Manduadih as Banaras railway station on Wednesday. After this, the replacement of sign boards started. The new code of Banaras railway station will be BSBS. The new sign boards contain the name of the station in Hindi, English, Urdu and also Sanskrit."
According to the NER officials, the process for renaming of this railway station had been initiated by former minister of state for railway and now Lt Governor of Jammu and Kashmir, Manoj Sinha, in February 2019.
In the same year, the Yogi Adityanath government accepted the proposal and forwarded it to the ministry of home affairs.
The formal renaming of Manduadih railway station as Banaras Railway Station by the Governor was done on September 16, 2020 in view of the NOC given by the ministry of home affairs of Government of India on March 31, 2020.
The officials had also started replacing the old name of station on sign boards but this process was stopped on September 20, 2020 as the process of change of code of railway station in centre of railway information system (CRIS) and freight operations information system (FOIS) could not be completed and the old code of Manduadih railway station existed in the system for journey ticket booking.
The officials said that in view of this, the NER had decided to start the replacement of the old name of the station by a new one only after completion of entire processes by the railway board.
With the finalisation of the renaming process 'Banaras' as a name of any railway station has returned on the Indian Railways map.
