KARUR: The Mahadanapuram railway station signboard was changed by railway officials after an article in The New Indian Express went viral on social media, creating an uproar among Tamil activists. The Sanskrit letter 'ha' has now been replaced by the Tamil letter 'ka'.
After the Southern Railway General Manager’s inspection of the Erode-Karur sections which was held about a month ago, officials revamped railway stations in their respective sections. All the old concrete railway station boards were replaced with small iron boards citing accidental falls.
The Mahadanapuram station board was among those changed. But officials replaced the Tamil letter ‘ka’ with a Sanskrit letter ‘ha’ in the station’s name. This didn’t go well with locals as well as Tamil activists which led to an uproar. Later, The New Indian Express carried an article about the name change and the dismay expressed by people on Wednesday, which went viral on social media. Many activists came down heavily on the railways for the replacement of the Tamil letter. As the station comes under the Krishnarayapuram Assembly Constituency (SC), the segment’s DMK candidate Sivagamasundari who is an advocate took to social media and lashed out at the railways.
In view of this, the Salem Division of Southern Railway took cognisance of the matter immediately and acted quickly to sort out the issue. The Sanskrit letter ‘ha’ was removed from the board and replaced by the Tamil letter ‘ka’ on Thursday.
An official from the Salem Division told The New Indian Express, “The station name board of Mahadanapuram was recently painted. While writing the name in Tamil, one of the letters got written in a script that is not widely followed in Tamil. This was purely by mistake. This has now been corrected. Now the Tamil spelling of the station name has been written in the same format which was followed earlier.”