What’s more unfortunate for the civic body, the road in question is near Ansari’s official residence.

The new signages have the road name in Urdu and Gurmukhi, apart from Hindi and English. Sources in NDMC said Ansari was “appalled” at the way the names were written in Urdu. He reportedly complained that the names were written by “nausikhiyas” and that the civic agency must correct the errors.

Result: the NDMC has now decided to rope in the Urdu Academy and the Punjabi Academy to ensure that errors do not occur in signages to be installed on other roads.

In a bid to spruce up the Capital ahead of the Commonwealth Games in 2010, NDMC had begun a pilot project along Maulana Azad Road last year: on the menu is installing new signages (in steel with retro-reflective sheeting) by replacing the existing cement signboards.

New signages have till date been installed on the road running along Vigyan Bhawan and the Vice President’s residence, the roundabout near the Chief Minister’s residence on Moti Lal Nehru Marg, and on the junction towards Janpath. Besides road names, NDMC is also installing shoulder mounted signages giving directions, before the road hits the roundabout. “We have received some complaints about the signages, particularly for the names in Urdu,” NDMC spokesperson Anand Tiwari said. “That is why we thought of taking assistance from the two language academies.

“Though both Urdu and Gurmukhi are official languages of Delhi, very few people know them properly.”

The Delhi government’s Department of Languages is yet to send a formal proposal to the Urdu Academy. The academy’s secretary, M H Abidi, said one needs to know a certain style while writing in Urdu. “That is why we have special calligraphers to do the job,” he said. “For example, people who don’t know the language properly and are mere painters may commit mistakes in writing ‘Jawaharlal’ or ‘Asaf Ali’ as each name is spelt differently from the way it sounds.”