Jaipur: The Rajasthan government has renamed the King Edward Memorial in Ajmer to Maharishi Dayanand Vishrant Grih. The renaming has been attributed as the freedom from the symbol of slavery by the Speaker of Rajasthan Vidhansabha Vasudev Devnani who represents the Ajmer North assembly constituency.

The building of King Edward VII Memorial, which is a Rest House and popularly known as KEM in Ajmer, is located on Ajmer Railway Station Road and was built 113 years ago in 1912-1913 with the objective of providing accommodation at affordable rates to the pilgrims visiting Ajmer and Pushkar. The building has been declared an old monument by the State Government's Gazette Notification in September 2014.

The renaming of the building has been done on the instructions of Rajasthan Vidhansabha Speaker Vasudev Devnani who is working to free Ajmer from “symbols of slavery”.

He had announced to change the name of the KEM to the name of Maharshi Dayanand Saraswati in the 200th birth anniversary celebrations of Maharishi Dayanand Saraswati organized recently in Ajmer.

Speaker Vasudev Devnani said that even after 76 years of Independence, India was still bearing these symbols of slavery, due to which the young generation was not getting the information about ancient Indian culture, civilization, spirituality and historical importance.

Before this, on Devnani's directions a Rajasthan Tourism Department Corporation hotel Khadim has been renamed to Hotel Ajaymeru (the historical name of Ajmer) and the famous Foysagar lake to Varun Sagar. The lake was named after the engineer Mr. Foy, an englishman, who created it under a famine relief project in 1892.