Karnataka CM writes to Centre, says Hindi signs on Metro will be replaced

Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has written a letter to Union Minister of Housing and Urban Affairs Narendra Singh Tomar stating the state government was compelled to redesign the signage in the metro without the Hindi language. Siddaramaiah had written that although the state government had taken the necessary action for maintaining law and order, the Centre’s three language policy of Hindi, English and a regional language in the Bengaluru metro was not reasonable. He also requested the Union Minister to review the Ministry’s earlier decision on the use of three languages. The letter also stated that “the cultural aspirations and sentiments of the people of Karnataka need to be respected. Apart from the cultural need to give primacy to the language of the State, it is also practical to use those languages which local people can read and follow. It is not essential to use Hindi in signages as the commuters who use the metro are comfortable with reading and understanding Kannada and or English. Hence, the state is compelled to ask the BMRCL to temporarily redesign the signages without using Hindi.” “Although both the centre and state have equal (50:50) equity stake in BMRCL, the financial contribution of the state government is much more than that of the Government of India. Moreover, the supervision of operations, providing of security etc to BMRCL is the responsibility of the state government. Also, the state government has undertaken to repay all the loans contracted by BMRCL and also to bear the operating losses,” he said. The issue first took root last month as social media users expressed their anger over the state government putting up Hindi signboards in the Bengaluru metro. The hashtag ‘NammaMetroHindiBeda’ (no Hindi in our metro) spread like wildfire, with activists defacing the signs by removing the Hindi names on the signboards. On Friday, the head of the Karnataka Development Authroity (KDA) also called for the removal of non-Kanndiga engineers on Friday.