CJI constitutes Committee headed by Justice AS Oka for translating SC judgments into regional languages
Tamil is to occupy high importance in Supreme Court.
From August 15, 2023, any Tamilian can get the judgment copy in Tamil. Tamil versions of the judgments will be uploaded to the website. In the future, all judgments delivered in English by Supreme Court will be translated into Tamil, Gujarati, Hindi, and Odiya.
An insider in the Union Ministry of Information Technology, who is the serving ministry for the Supreme Court, said that in a gradual manner by early 2024 Supreme Court judgments will be in Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, and Bengali.
Chief Justice of India Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud said a committee has been formed, headed by SC judge Abhay Oka, to translate the judgments into four languages with a mission. Every High Court across the country should have a committee of two judges, one of whom should be a judge who is drawn from the district judiciary “because of their sheer width of experience”. Technology is with us, make use of it said the CJI.
Chief Justice Chandrachud stated that while remarking that English is “not a comprehensible language to 99.9% of citizens” in the country.
Speaking during the inauguration function of the Online e-Inspection Software that will allow inspection of digitized judicial files of the Delhi High Court, the CJI said that translation of judgments in the regional languages will smoothen the access to justice for the citizens.
“A very important initiative which we have adopted recently is the translation of judgments of the Supreme Court in regional languages. Because we must understand that the language we use namely English, is a language that is not comprehensible, particularly in its legal avatar, to 99.9% of our citizens, in which case really access to justice cannot be meaningful unless citizens are able to access and understand in a language which they speak and comprehend, the judgments which we deliver whether in the high courts or in the Supreme Court,” said the CJI.
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Obviously translating judgements into regional languages is more important than sorting out the collegium issue.