BENGALURU: It's official. Unreserved tickets issued from any railway station in Karnataka now have the names of originating and destinations stations in Kannada .

Railway Minister Piyush Goyal confirmed that move to include Kannada in unreserved railway tickets along with English and Hindi and it came into effect from Thursday.

A press release from South Western Railway claimed this is the first time a language other than English and Hindi has been adopted with Kannada being the first.

"Indian Railways is enabling printing of key information on train tickets in local language. Beginning is being made with addition of Kannada on unreserved tickets issued through its UTS system. The facility has been started initially at Mysuru, Bengaluru and Hubballi stations of South Western Railway and the same will be extended to all other stations of Karnataka in a phased manner," said a press release from South Western Railway.

“The name of the starting station, the destination, class and mail express/passenger will be printed in Kannada too along with existing languages which is, English and Hindi” it said.

Last year, Indian Railways’ passenger amenities committee approved a proposal to print tickets in the local language, apart from Hindi and English, from January 1, 2018.

Many states like Tamil Nadu have been demanding inclusion of local languages in tickets and official forms for the past few years.

Kannada activists have welcomed the move. In fact, there was a hashtag campaign on twitter #ServeInMyLanguage against alleged Hindi imposition and to recognize Kannada.

Last year, pro-Kannada groups defaced Hindi signs in Namma Metro stations protesting against the Hindi imposition by the Centre.

