Deadline to set up Marathi signboards extended to June 30

Mumbai The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has extended the deadline for setting up Marathi signboards in all the shops and establishments in Mumbai to June 30.

Municipal commissioner, Iqbal Singh Chahal said that the deadline has been extended to June 30. “Most of the shops and business owners don’t have the infrastructure or financial viability to replace the existing signboards with new ones in such a short notice. There are more than five lakh shop owners in the city and most of them are small-scale business owners and taking rampant probationary action against them will only increase the burden on court and civic body,” Chahal told HT on Thursday.

“Therefore, we have decided to give them an extension and in the meantime, our officials at the ward-level will reach out to the shop owners and sensitise them. After that, we will carry out a ground-level survey between July 1 and 15 to identify if any shops and business owners have failed to comply with the rules, following which we will take probationary action against them,” said Chahal.

Earlier in May, senior officials said that they will impose a penalty of ₹2,000 on each of the employees of the shops who fail to come up with Marathi signboards from June 10.

“We have held multiple meetings with retailers’ associations and business owners of the city, including representatives of some of the shopping malls as well and all of them have agreed to comply with the rules,” said an official.

Chahal said that business establishments situated in main roads, shopping malls, lanes and minor roads will have to follow the rules compulsorily and the BMC will prepare a special team and set of guidelines to monitor this issue at the ground-level.

Viren Shah, president of Federation of Retail Traders Welfare Association (FRTWA), said that more than 40 per cent of the shops in Mumbai have their names written in Marathi but in smaller fonts.

“The BMC shouldn’t take aggressive action against the shopkeepers and give them time to make the changes because replacing the signboards is a time-consuming process and nobody is able to do it overnight. We welcome the move of granting us an extension and at the same time we will request them to spread more awareness about this issue as most of the business-owners are still unaware,” said Shah.

Earlier in April, the BMC had issued a notification stating that all the shops and business establishments in the city should compulsorily have the names of their establishments written in Marathi and Devanagari script, along with any other language.

The notification further stated that the font size of the letters in Marathi should be prominently visible and larger than the size of any other language on the board and had set a deadline of May 31 for implementation.

BMC’s move came one month after the state legislature approved the amendment of the Maharashtra Shops and Establishments (Regulation of Employment and Condition of Service) Act, 2017.