potholes

signage

traders

Bengaluru

BBMP

name boards

business establishments

FKCCI president says he wishes civic body showed same zealousness in filling upin the cityWith just 13 days left to ensure that in every, 60% of the text is in Kannada, thousands ofand businessmen who don’t adhere to this, are at the risk of losing their trade licences in the city. The BruhatMahanagara Palike () had made it clear that trade licences would be cancelled if the traders and businessmen failed to give prominence to Kannada in the“We have already served notices to the traders and businessmen for failing to ensure that 60 per cent of their signage is in Kannada. Cancelling trade licences is one of the options. Our main objective is to implement this norm,’’ said BBMP Commissioner B H Anil Kumar.The State Government had approved the BBMP’s Outdoor Signage & Public Messaging Bylaws 2018 in September 2019. The new norms were supposed to come into effect within 90 days in the BBMP jurisdiction. On October 9, Mayor Goutham Kumar Jain had announced that all name boards of shops andshould give prominence to Kannada. The Mayor had set November 1 as the deadline but later extended it by one month.There are 47,406 shops and business establishments in Bengaluru. The BBMP authorities inspected 20,689 name boards and found that 7,734 traders and businessmen had signages with 60 per cent of the text in Kannada. The rest, 13,572 traders and businessmen, were issued notices by the BBMP for not adhering to the rules. New traders who want trade licences must upload the image of the name board, designed as per the new stipulations, on the BBMP website.Meanwhile, C R Janardhana, president of the Federation of Karnataka Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FKCCI) has complained about the shortage of time to implement the BBMP’s order on name boards.“There’s not enough time for the artists and designers to make new name boards according to the BBMP’s stipulations. The BBMP authorities should give more time to traders and businessmen to design new name boards,’’ said Janardhana.The FKCCI president made it clear that traders and businessmen were not against having new name boards where more prominence is given to Kannada.“We too love Kannada and we are not against it. We want the BBMP authorities to fix potholes in the city. We know how and when to put up new name boards. They need not bother about us implementing the order,’’ he said.Emphasising the need to give importance to Kannada in the name boards, Kannada Development Authority chairman T S Nagabharana said that the new norm was neglected for a quite long time.“We have waited for quite a long time for the implementation of this norm. I want all the shops and business establishments to have 60 per cent of signage in Kannada without any delay,’’ said Nagabharana.