South Western Railway Postpones Exams Amid Protests Over Kannada Omission; CM Siddaramaiah Slams Language Oppression

Mysore/Hubballi: Facing protests from Kannada organisations, the South Western Railway on Wednesday abruptly postponed the exams for over 290 posts in the Hubli division, which were scheduled to be held for two consecutive days on March 17 and 18.

The cancellation of examinations for 194 Goods Train Manager posts and 101 LDCE posts in the Hubballi division of the South Western Railway Department left thousands of Kannadiga job seekers in a precarious situation. Chief Minister Siddaramaiah also expressed his anger over the incident.

Thousands of job seekers have raised their voices since the day the exam notification was issued about not allowing the exam to be conducted in Kannada. They expressed their dissatisfaction against the Railway Department, which, according to them, had been ignoring peaceful protests and resistance and had cancelled the exam at the last minute.

According to job seekers, if the Railway Department had woken up earlier, corrected its mistake and allowed the exam to be conducted in Kannada, the current situation would not have arisen.

Siddramaiah said job seekers have been facing injustice from the beginning due to the central government's “insidious imposition of Hindi” in the recruitment of jobs in various central departments.

“Unfortunately, the Railways has taken an anti-Kannada stance and done injustice to Kannada, Karnataka and Kannadigas,” the CM said. He continued, “I had also kept the hope that V. Somanna would stand up for the Kannadigas and correct the injustice, but nothing happened.”

Siddaramaiah further accused the Centre of “language oppression”. According to him, the move of the Centre, which allows only Hindi and English in central examinations with the sole intention of helping Hindi speakers in North India, cannot be tolerated.

“We should not forget that states were formed based on languages. We do not oppose Hindi as a language, but we won’t tolerate the imposition of Hindi on Kannada. The ruling party MPs may have fallen into the trap of the party and kept their mouths shut against the injustice being done to Kannada,” he added.

He further said that the central government should ensure that the Kannadigas of the state do not face injustice in the name of language in the future. The CM sought the intervention of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in this regard.

A total of 12 departmental selection examinations involving the staff of Hubballi Division were scheduled to be held at the RRC in Hubballi on Tuesday and Wednesday. On Wednesday at about 8:30 am, members of the Kannada Rakshana Vedike (Narayana Gowda Group) protested at the entrance of the Railway Recruitment Cell (RRC) office in Hubballi, preventing the candidates and examination staff from entering. They demanded that the departmental promotion examinations be conducted in Kannada as well. Manjunath Kanamadi, chief public relations officer, South Western Railway, said the new dates of the postponed examinations will be notified later.