The West Bengal Assembly passed a resolution today to rename the State as 'Bangla' in three languages -- Bengali, English and Hindi.

The move is aimed at climbing the alphabetical sequence of State names in which West Bengal appears last in the list now.

The State will have to wait for the nod from the Home Ministry for a final approval on the resolution.

Earlier, the Centre had rejected the State government's proposals of having three names Bangla (in Bengali), Bengal (in English) and Bangal (in Hindi).

The Mamata Banerjee government's proposal of renaming West Bengal as "Paschim Bango" in 2011 was also turned down by the Centre.

The main reason for the name change is believed to be to emotionally appeal to the Bengali voters. Another reason for choosing 'b' as the initial for the name is Yojana Bhawan's allocation. It allocates money to States in the alphabetical order. West Bengal used to get it last because its name started with a 'w'. Renaming the State as Bangla will make it one of the first States to get allocations after Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh etc.