Meanwhile, the restaurant association has asked for the display boards in English to also be displayed prominently along with Marathi script. A day after Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation said that all shops and establishments in Mumbai — irrespective of size — should use Marathi signboards in Devanagari script predominantly, the federation of retail traders said on Thursday that while changing the display boards would cause inconvenience to them, they had no option but to abide by the new rule.
“There are more than 5 lakh shops, establishments, and license holders in the city and it is not easy to change the display boards overnight. Nearly 50 per cent of restaurants and pubs have their names in English, so ensuring that the Marathi script is bigger than any other will be a difficult task. We have always ensured that Marathi script is used in our display boards, but now they have said it should be bigger than any other language,” said Viren Shah, President, of the Federation of Retail Traders Welfare Association (FRTWA) in Mumbai.
The Federation had filed a petition with the Bombay HC against the decision. However, the high court upheld the state’s decision, terming it a “reasonable requirement”. “We have not gone any relief from the Bombay HC. We are planning an appeal in Supreme Court, but that is in process,” added Shah.
The BMC order comes against the backdrop of a bill cleared by the state legislature last month that stated that if the signboard displays the name of any shop or business in more than one script, the one in Devanagari should be in bigger type. In a statement last month after the legislature cleared the bill, FRTWA, a state-level umbrella group of shops, said shopkeepers had suffered a lot in the Covid 19 induced pandemic, and changing signboards would impose an additional financial burden on them.
Meanwhile, the restaurant association has asked for the display boards in English to also be displayed prominently along with Marathi script. “The industry is in full agreement with the decision for establishments to maintain Marathi signage displays in Maharashtra. However, Mumbai being a cosmopolitan city, the English signage size should be prominent. We should also consider that Maharashtra gets lots of foreign tourists from all over the world and it’s for their benefit that English signage should not be dwarfed. Also, the implementation should be gradual as huge costs are involved in making changes to the existing signage displays which would be an additional burden for the industry already reeling under a severe financial slump,” said Pradeep Shetty, Senior Vice President, Hotel and Restaurant Association of Western India (HRAWI).
“It might take approximately six months to change the signboards…the duration and costs will differ depending on the size and design of signboards,” added Shetty.
Failure to comply with the rules would attract a penalty up to Rs 1 lakh and a fine of Rs 2,000 per day would be imposed in the event of continued non-compliance. The BMC note issued on Wednesday said the amended rule would be applicable immediately. However, BMC officials said shops, restaurants, bars and other establishments would get “some time” to change the display boards as per the new rule. The civic body didn’t specify a time frame for implementing the change.
- The Indian Express website has been rated GREEN for its credibility and trustworthiness by Newsguard, a global service that rates news sources for their journalistic standards.
