The Union Cabinet on Tuesday (24 February 2026) approved changing the name of Kerala to ‘Keralaam’. Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnav said, ‘Ever since the state was formed on the basis of language, there was a demand that the name of Kerala should be Keralam. The cabinet has approved this demand. This step has been taken before the Kerala Assembly elections to be held in the state this year.
Bill will be sent to the state assembly
Information and Broadcasting Minister Ashwini Vaishnav said that the bill to change the name of Kerala will now be sent to the state assembly for approval. He said that in the first meeting of the Cabinet held in the new PMO building, a proposal was passed to take all decisions in the interest of 140 crore people.
This was the first meeting of the Union Cabinet held in the new Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) building ‘Seva Tirtha’. The Kerala Assembly had unanimously passed a resolution on June 24, 2024, urging the Center to officially change the name of the state to ‘Keralam’. The Kerala Assembly passed this proposal for the second time because the Union Home Ministry had earlier reviewed the proposal and suggested some technical changes.
Union Cabinet approves the proposal for alteration of name of State of ‘Kerala’ as ‘Keralam’ pic.twitter.com/uVydvy5fFl
— ANI (@ANI) February 24, 2026
Home Ministry had suggested technical changes
Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan wanted the central government to change the name of the southern state from Kerala to ‘Keralam’ in all the languages ​​included in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution. The Kerala Assembly had passed a similar unanimous resolution in August 2023 and sent it to the Centre, but the Home Ministry had suggested some technical changes in it.
Bharatiya Janata Party’s Kerala State President Rajeev Chandrashekhar had also written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier this year demanding changing the official name of the state from ‘Kerala’ to ‘Keralaam’. He had said that the name ‘Keralam’ is deeply linked to the Malayalam language and the cultural identity of the state.
