All lower Court Orders must only be in Tamil : HC

The Hindu 2 July 2014

Henceforth, subordinate judicial officers cannot use English while recording evidence and pronouncing judgements

The Madras High Court on Tuesday set aside an official memorandum issued by its Registrar on January 5, 1994, exempting subordinate judicial officers in Tamil Nadu from recording evidence and writing judgments, decrees and orders only in Tamil as per a 1976 amendment to the Tamil Nadu Official Languages Act, 1956.

Justices V. Ramasubramanian and V.M. Velumani passed the order after allowing a petition filed by a lawyer, P. Rathinam, to revise an order passed by another Division Bench on February 22, 2013. The earlier Bench had dismissed a public interest litigation petition challenging the legal validity of the memorandum in vogue for more than two decades.

According to the revision petitioner, the Legislature amended the Tamil Nadu Official Languages Act, 1956, on November 12, 1976, and introduced Sections 4-A and 4-B that declared Tamil the only official language of subordinate courts for recording evidence and writing judgments, decrees and orders.

Pursuant to the amendment, a District Munsif wrote a judgment in Tamil. But when it was taken on appeal, the High Court in 1978 declared it a mere “waste of paper” on the ground that the two amended provisions were yet to come into force. Thereafter, a Government Order was issued on January 18, 1982, to bring the provisions into force.

Immediately, a batch of writ petitions was filed in the High Court against the constitutional validity of Section 4-B. The first to approach the court was a Rajasthani lawyer, M. Ranka, who said the provision went against the interest of non-Tamil speaking lawyers and judicial officers. Even as the cases were pending, the High Court, on its administrative side, issued a memorandum allowing judicial officers to use either Tamil or English because not all pieces of legislation had been translated in Tamil. However, the memorandum did not set any time limit for the validity of the exemption granted to the lower courts. Subsequently, on April 21, 1994, a Full Bench (of three judges), headed by the then Chief Justice, M. Srinivasan, dismissed the writ petitions.

The issue was placed before a Full Court meeting on March 24 this year; but it decided to seek the opinion of the subordinate judges. Stating that seeking the opinion of the subordinate judges would not enhance the cause of Tamil, the petitioner claimed that at the first instance, the High Court itself “has no power to decide what should be the official language of the subordinate courts.”

Henceforth, subordinate judicial officers cannot use English while recording evidence and pronouncing judgments