Maharashtra Assembly passes bill to make Marathi mandatory in official works
Maharashtra Assembly – making the Marathi language mandatory
A bill was passed in Maharashtra Assembly making the Marathi language mandatory for officials working under civic bodies, corporations, and local authorities. State minister Subhash Desai said the introduction of the bill was necessitated as the Maharashtra Official Language Act, 1964 did not make it mandatory for the local authorities to use Marathi in their official works.
With the passing of the bill, any (local) authority, be it established by the state government or the central government or (state-run) corporations, will have to use Marathi while interacting with people and in internal work too.
Additionally, the use of English or Hindi by local authorities for certain government works like communicating with foreign ambassadors has been allowed.
Maharashtra Assembly – Marathi has written in the Devanagari script on their signboards
This month only, the State Assembly also approved a law that made it mandatory for all shops and establishments to have Marathi written in the Devanagari script on their signboards. The bill said that the font size of the lettering in Marathi-Devanagari should not be smaller than the font size of letters in any other language that is used on the signage.
In 2017, the Maharashtra government made it compulsory for all shops and establishments in the state to have signboards in Marathi and the Devanagari script. However, some establishments (less than 10 workers) tried to evade this rule. In some cases, while the name was mentioned in capital letters in English, the signage in Marathi was in the smaller case.
The new Act has mandated that even those shops employing less than 10 workers will need signage in Marathi. The establishments can have any other language and script on their name boards. The law also stipulates that no establishment where liquor is served or sold shall have a name board in the name of legends, icons, or forts.