Chennai, Sep 3 (PTI) The Tamil Nadu Assembly on Thursday unanimously adopted a resolution, moved by Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay, urging the Centre to recognise Tamil as the principal language of the Madras High Court.
The chief minister moved the government’s resolution, saying it was not against any language.
He said: “The Constitution of India, while upholding the federal principle and recognising the multilingual and multicultural character of India, provides various legal avenues for the States to use their respective official languages.” Vijay further said: “The Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly unanimously urges the union government to take immediate and necessary action to facilitate the use of Tamil as the principal language of the High Court of Madras.” During the discussion on the resolution, legislators recalled the history of the demand and the initiatives made by their respective leaders in this regard.
MLAs belonging to key parties, including the principal opposition DMK, spoke supporting the resolution.
Later, Speaker JCD Prabhakar declared that the resolution had been adopted unanimously.
Former AIADMK minister C Ve Shanmugam said the Madras High Court should be renamed as Tamil Nadu HC.
DMK’s EV Velu also made a similar request. Shanmugam alleged a “north-south” divide as states like Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, were allowed to use Hindi in the HC of the respective states. However, a request to allow Tamil in the Madras HC had been disallowed, Shanmugam claimed.
DMK’s S Regupathy said it was his late party patriarch M Karunanidhi who had initiated efforts to make Tamil as the language of the High Court. Resolutions had been adopted twice during his party-led regime for Tamil in the high court, he said.
Law Minister R Nirmal Kumar said this is the first time a resolution has sought the principal language status for Tamil.
Regupathy, however, reiterated that his party-led governments had all along batted for Tamil in the top state court.
The resolution batting for principal language status, referred to Tamil’s status as a classical language, the significant advancements in legal vocabulary in the Tamil language and cited facilities like technology-enabled translation.
It sought the creation of a framework under which all judgments, decrees and judicial orders delivered by the High Court are made available in Tamil.
The resolution underscored that Tamil is one of the world’s ancient languages, possessing a grammatical and literary heritage spanning several millennia and urged the Centre to allow Tamil as the language of the High Court.
Article 348(1) (a) of the Constitution of India states that all proceedings in the Supreme Court and in every High Court shall be in the English language. However, the Governor of a State may, with the previous consent of the President, authorise the use of Hindi, or any other language used for any official purposes of the State, in the proceedings in the High Court having its principal seat in that State.
The Cabinet Committee’s decision dated 21.05.1965 has stipulated that consent of the Chief Justice of India be obtained on any proposal relating to use of a language other than English in the High Court. PTI SNR JSP VGN ROH
This report is auto-generated from PTI news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.