Maha: Marathi signboard to be mandatory for small shops too

The Maharashtra Government on Wednesday decided to make it mandatory for shops with fewer than ten employees to use Marathi signboards, a senior minister said here.

The Maharashtra Shops and Establishments (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act will be amended for this, Industries Minister Subhash Desai told reporters.

The decision was taken at the weekly cabinet meeting, said Desai who also holds the Marathi language portfolio.

The objective was to close a legal loophole which the owners of small shops exploit to avoid putting up Marathi signboards (already required for bigger establishments), he said. Notably, the Raj Thackeray-led Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, a rival to the current ruling coalition partner Shiv Sena, had launched a violent agitation in the past demanding that signboards must be in Marathi too.

Desai further said that the amendment will also provide that the name on a signboard in the Devnagari script (in which Marathi is written) should not be smaller than that in any other script.