Devendra Fadnavis has given taxi and tuk-tuk drivers in Maharashtra another year to learn Marathi. The extension delays the risk of licence suspension or cancellation for drivers who had failed the first check.
Transport officials began testing drivers on 20 August for basic conversations in Marathi. Maharashtra has almost 979,000 valid tuk-tuk and taxi permits, and nearly half are in the Mumbai metropolitan region.
Pratap Sarnaik on the deadline
Pratap Sarnaik said drivers are expected to learn Marathi during the year and that there will be no more extensions. He tied the extra time to the same enforcement line that already gave failed drivers a month before suspension or cancellation could follow.
That timing matters for drivers who were already told they had only a month after failing the initial test. Lakhan Pandey, a taxi driver in Mumbai, said: "We were worried that if our licences were suspended, our daily income would be affected" and later added, "Now we feel somewhat relieved."
Maharashtra permit numbers
The policy covers almost 979,000 valid permits, so the extra year affects a large share of daily transport work across the state. Many of the drivers are migrants from other parts of India, including Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, which has made the rule harder for workers who are still learning Marathi while relying on their licences for income.
The government says the language requirement is meant to improve communication between drivers and passengers and ensure safer journeys. Drivers' unions and migrants see the same rule as a threat to livelihoods while they are still learning the language, which is why the deadline was pushed back after protests.
Marathi politics in Maharashtra
The dispute sits inside a longer political argument over Marathi identity, migration and employment. Maharashtra was formed in 1960 after a long campaign for a Marathi-speaking state, and the Shiv Sena was founded in 1966 on a "sons of the soil" platform.
Prakash Akolkar said, "The issue is not simply about communication between drivers and passengers, but about Marathi identity, migration and employment," and added, "Ordinary people do not always treat language with the same intensity as political parties." Deepak Pawar, president of the Marathi Abhyas Kendra, is among the people involved in the broader language debate. The reader-facing question now is straightforward: drivers have one more year, but the state has already said the testing will not keep stretching.
