Even as city fathers promote the idea of making Mumbai a ‘global financial hub’, they are adamant on retaining Marathi as the first agenda.
Even as city fathers promote the idea of making Mumbai a ‘global financial hub’, they are adamant on retaining Marathi as the first agenda.
On Monday, the Shiv Sena in the BMC made known its intention to challenge a 2001 high court stay on a move to make Marathi script the first choice for nameplates of shops and establishments in the city. Standing committee chairman Ravindra Waikar said the corporation planned to ensure that all shops and establishments in the city have nameplates which also bore a ‘legible’ reference in Devnagari script.
Last week, the municipal corporation declared that those shops and establishment not having nameplates in the Marathi Devnagari script will be acted against. Municipal shop and establishments laws require all registered commercial settlement to use nameplates which also have their reference in the Devanagari script, failing which they could be fined upto Rs 5000.
Municipal commissioner Jairaj Phatak stated that 70 per cent of the shops already conformed to the norm and the remaining have time up to August 28 to abide by the law.
The strict implementation of the law, which was dormant for all these years, comes immediately after the Sena led alliance got another Marathi agenda, the use of Marathi for all administrative purposes in the BMC, implemented. The pushing of the Marathi agenda comes at a time, when a report compiled by a centre appointed high powered committee to transform Mumbai into a global financial centre of the class of London and New York has advocated the use of English as the default language and supported the thought of providing job opportunities to atleast 50,000 non locales. While political parties claim that the issue of making the city a global player was close to their hearts, parties including the ruling saffron alliance in the BMC, do not want to shed the Marathi first agenda, with the assembly elections in sight.
Waikar said that making Mumbai a global financial centre was key, but his party was against the idea of achieving this by compromising the prevalent city culture.
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