CHANDIGARH: Baljeet Singh Khalsa, 50, a resident of Mohali, has the noble intention of promoting Punjabi language at heart. But in his misplaced zeal, he has taken to defacing English and Hindi marked boards of government offices.
Baljeet has blackened at least eight such boards at various places, including the ones outside the judicial academy, registration and licensing authority office in Chandigarh on Saturday. Every day, he can be seen riding a scooter with a bucket of black ink.
The police on Sunday arrested him for painting black all official sign boards across the city which are in English and Hindi and not in Punjabi. A case was registered against the accused, Baljeet Singh Khalsa, under Section 3 (Penalty for defacement of property) of Defacement Act.
Baljeet Singh Khalsa was arrested following his act of defacement at various places in the city. He started his act with painting black the boards of Rajiv Gandhi IT park at Sector 29-30 roundabout. He then moved to Kendriya Vidyalaya Sector 31, Paryavaran Bhawan, Sector 19, Survey of India Complex, Dakshin Marg, Sector 32-A, Nirman Bhavan Chandigarh, Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) building at Sector 31 and Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti in Sector 31. He was arrested from a Gurudwara in Sector 40, though he was later released on bail.
Claiming responsibility for disfiguring the notice boards and signboards, Khalsa said he has been doing it purposely to communicate to Chandigarh Administration to adopt Punjabi as the official language and give preference to Punjabi speaking youth for employment. He recently painted signboards at Registration and Licensing Authority (RLA) in black too. Applicants had to face problems as boards which give details of different formalities required to seek documents were smeared with black paint, resulting in difficulty in filling the forms.
Source: TOI, Indian Express