Bengaluru: A few pro-Kannada activists representing Karnataka Rakshana Vedike (KRV), which has been vociferously fighting against the imposition and use of Hindi signages at the Namma Metro stations, sprayed black paint on such signages on Thursday.
The activists swung into action as early as 5 am to spray black paint on the Hindi boards, before the Namma Metro officially starts functioning at 6 am.
Activists formed small groups and went to many stations, incluidng Peenya, Jayanagar and Deepanjali nagar and sprayed black paint on all Hindi sign boards, shouted slogan against imposition of Hindi.
Several signages at Namma Metro stations were painted black and the KRV has claimed they will continue protests till metro officials removed Hindi signages.
Though police were deployed at several metro stations, they could not keep the activists at bay.
As deploying CISF personnel to safeguard metro stations was proving costly, the state government had deployed Karnataka State Industrial Security Force to guard the metro stations.
Since June 17, when the 42 km network was thrown open, KSISF were deployed at seven underground stations and three other elevated stations, including MG Road. Sources said that station controllers were not instructed on how to handle situations like what happened on Thursday, protect the station premises and manage the security of passengers beforehand by the management of the corporation. A few activists claimed that they had given an ultimatum of one month to remove the Hindi signages. Since the authorities failed to clear it the activists resorted to blackening of boards, they said. Regular commuters at National College said that they were shocked and the previous incident of Metro going on flash strike was fresh in their minds. However, the activists did not barge into the stations as their intention was not to disrupt the metro services, commuters said.
However, they took objection at the way security personnel functioned. If they could not prevent a handful of people from blackening the Hindi signages, how can they handle any major law and order situation, questioned commuters.
BMRCL source said that all the 41 stations’ signboards were sprayed with black paint and were cleaned by Thursday afternoon.
Following the Official Language Act 1960, and a circular sent by ministry of urban development on December 9 to use three languages in metro rail services in non-Hindi speaking regions, including regional language, Hindi and English.
Despite repeated attempts BMRCL MD Pradeep Singh Kharola was not available for comments.
