Railways order on destination boards incurs Kannada activists’ wrath

The recent decision of the Railways to do away with destination name boards displayed on trains in languages other than Hindi and English has sparked off a row with Kannada organizations staging rail blockades and holding protests in various parts of the State.

A large number of Kannada activists halted trains in Tumkur, besides staging protests outside the railway stations of Bangalore and Mysore on Monday to protest the “anti-Kannada” move by the Railways.

The pro-Kannada organizations apprehended that the recent decision of the Railway Board to have destination name boards and instruction boards in all trains only in Hindi and English would lead to removal of destination name boards, which are in Kannada, on all in-bound and out-bound trains from Karnataka.

Kannada Protection Committee President V Narayan Gowda who led a protest in front of Bangalore Railway station questioned the impartiality of Federal Minister of State for Railways R Velu, who had secured an exemption for destination name boards that are in Tamil. “Tamil has been exempted from the rule as Velu is from Tamil Nadu”, he said.

The Kannada activists shouted slogans against Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav as well as R Velu.

Describing the Railway’s recent order on the languages to be used in destination name boards displayed on trains as an “insult” to the 55 million Kannadigas, Gowda threatened to intensify the agitation if the Railway authorities fail to rescind the order in 36 hours. “If the anti-Kannada order is not withdrawn within 36 hours, 55 million Kannadigas do not want train services”, he said.

At a function organized to receive the Kannada Border Area Committee report in Bangalore, Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy said he would soon write a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the destination name boards issue.

Meanwhile, the police arrested more than a hundred Kannada activists outside the Governor’s residence at Raj Bhavan in Bangalore when they were participating in a protest led by independent MLA Vatal Nagaraj.

The Kannada activists were not only demanding withdrawal of the Railway Boards’s controversial order on destination name boards, but also seeking the immediate sanction of classical language status to Kannada and implementation of Mahajan Commission report on border dispute between Karnataka and Maharashtra.