The Prime Meridian is the line of the longitude that is used as the global reference for time
Bhopal: Madhya Pradesh government is working to replace Greenwich in UK with Ujjain in MP as the Global Prime Meridian (GPM).
Madhya Pradesh chief minister Mohan Yadav shared the information with his ministerial colleagues while addressing the meeting of the state cabinet here on Monday.
“Ujjain was once recognized as the GPM. We want to re-establish Ujjain as the GPM in place of Greenwich. We are working in this direction”, state urban development minister Kailash Vijayvargiya said while briefing the reporters here on the deliberations at the cabinet meeting.
Mr. Vijayvargiya said that the chief minister is keen to scientifically establish that Ujjain, not Greenwich, is the GPM.
The Prime Meridian is the line of the longitude that is used as the global reference for time.
According to the belief of the ancient Hindu astronomers, Ujjain is the precise point of intersection of zero Meridian with the Tropic of Cancer.
The chief minister while first broaching the idea of pushing Ujjain as the GPM to ‘correct the world time’ recently had said that earlier it was Ujjain’s time that was known as the world time.
But Paris later reviewed the world time which was later adopted by the British who set Greenwich as Prime Meridian.
Mr. Vijayvargiya said that it has been decided at the cabinet meeting that the ensuing Gudi Padwa festival, falling on March 30, will be celebrated across Madhya Pradesh as Hindu New Year.
Gudi Padwa is a spring festival marking the start of the lunisolar new year, being celebrated by Hindus in some parts of the country.
The calendar Vikram Samvat is a historical Hindu calendar, based on lunar months and solar sidereal years, and is believed to have begun in 57 BCE, will be promoted in the state on the occasion of celebration of Gudi Padwa.
The cabinet also decided to review the investment proposals received at the recently held global investors’ summit here at the level of principal secretaries, then at the level of chief secretary and finally at the level of chief minister to ensure that the projects take the wings.
