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Allahabad High Court Begins Publishing Translated Judgments In Hindi
Sparsh Upadhyay
28 March 2023 3:57 PM GMT
The Allahabad High Court has started publishing judgments translated into the Hindi language. The decision was taken soon after Justice Pritinker Diwaker took oath as the new Chief Justice of the High Court.The first judgment that has been translated from the English language to the Hindi language relates to a direction to the UP Government to prepare a revised select list of 69,000...
The Allahabad High Court has started publishing judgments translated into the Hindi language. The decision was taken soon after Justice Pritinker Diwaker took oath as the new Chief Justice of the High Court.
The first judgment that has been translated from the English language to the Hindi language relates to a direction to the UP Government to prepare a revised select list of 69,000 Assistant Teachers selected through the Assistant Teachers Recruitment Examination (ATRE) 2019 rectifying the irregularities committed in fixing the quota for their appointment.
Recently Kerala High Court, Delhi High Court, and Bombay High Court have also started publishing decisions in their regional language.
A press note issued in this regard reads thus:
"The Government of India and Hon'ble Supreme Court has taken an initiative that copies of the judgments of Hon'ble Supreme Court and Hon'ble High Court also be made available in all vernacular languages to the common man and the concerned departments. In pursuance thereof, after the oath ceremony of Hon'ble Chief Justice Shri Pritinker Diwaker on 26th March 2023, taking prompt steps in this regard, the Hon'ble High Court, Allahabad has for the first time got the judgment passed by Hon'ble Justice Om Prakash Shukla, who is presiding at Lucknow Bench of Hon'ble High Court, Allahabad, in Writ-A No.-13156 of 2020 translated in vernacular language (Hindi) and uploaded the same on the website of this Hon'ble High Court. With publication of this judgment in vernacular language, the common man, as well as the concerned departments, shall find it extremely easy to comprehend and implement the judgment."
It may be noted that the Apex Court had set up an Artificial Intelligence committee at the national level to implement the use of Artificial Intelligence in the Courts of India to enhance the efficiency of the Justice Delivery System. ‘SUVAS’ (Supreme Court Vidhik Anuwad Software) was thus developed under the auspices of the Supreme Court of India for the translation of Judicial Documents and has been proposed to use translation of judgments into vernacular languages.
The project is monitored by Justice Abhay.S. Oka, Judge, Supreme Court of India. In the Kerala High Court, Justice A. Muhamed Mustaque and Justice Raja Vijayaraghavan V. are the members of the Artificial Intelligence Assisted Legal Translation Advisory Committee, which has been steering the implementation of the project. It is using this AI Tool that the Kerala High Court has translated the said decisions.
In January 2023, the Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud had said that the judgments of the Apex Court would be translated to four languages, namely, Hindi, Gujarati, Odia, and Tamil, on noting that the English language in its “legal avatar” was not comprehensible to 99.9% of Indian citizens.
"A very important initiative which we have adopted recently, is our initiative for translation of the judgments of the Supreme Court in regional languages. Because we must understand that the language which we use namely English, is a language which 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", the CJI had said.
The Apex Court had also proposed to release 1,268 of its judgments in 13 Indian languages on Republic Day this year. Of those, 1,091 judgments had been translated to Hindi, 21 to Odia, 14 to Marathi, 4 to Assamese, 1 to Garo, 17 to Kannada, 1 to Khasi, 29 to Malayalam, three to Nepali, 4 to Punjabi, 52 to Tamil, 28 to Telugu and 3 to Urdu.
The proposal for the same had initially been mooted by the former President Ram Nath Kovind, who stated that a a system could be evolved whereby certified translated copies of judgements would be made available in the local or regional language. "It is important to not only take justice to the people, but also to make it understandable to litigating parties in a language they know. High Courts deliver judgements in English, but we are a country of diverse languages. The litigant may not be conversant with English and the finer points of the judgement may escape him or her. The litigating parties will thus be dependent on the lawyer or another person to translate the judgement. This can add to time and cost", the former Indian President had emphasized. He had further suggested that the certified translated copies of judgments could be made available within 24 or 36 hours after the pronouncement of the judgment.
The proposal had been mulled by the Apex Court in 2019, under the aegis of the then CJI Ranjan Gogoi, and had decided to translate judgments to six vernacular languages, namely, Assamese, Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, Odia, and Telugu. The indigenously developed software by the electronic software wing of the Supreme Court had also been cleared by the then CJI Gogoi.
By July 2019, the Apex Court had started uploading judgments in regional languages, in a separate tab titled 'Vernacular Judgments' on the Supreme Court portal. The judgments of a case originating from a particular state was seen translated to the language of that state, and translated judgments in six vernacular languages were seen to be made available. By 2020, some more judgments in Malayalam, Tamil, and Hindi, were also seen to be made available.
