The Government is emphasising to promote and enhance the use of Hindi and other regional languages in Legal Education and to carry out the legal proceedings of the Supreme Court, High Courts and the other judicial wings, Union Minister of Law and Justice Kiren Rijiju has said.
We are digitising 65000 words Legal glossary and make them available to public and creating an online platform to crowd–sourcing of the coining of legal terminology for Indian Languages, Rijiju said in a written reply in Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament, on December 9.
Further, this Ministry is in the process to Identify frequently used words in the legal documents and creating a transitive vocabulary/common core vocabulary by coining words from common roots which would be adaptable by all the Indian languages so that the translation of legal documents from one Indian language to another Indian language would be easier, he said.
According to Rijiju, the Ministry of Law and Justice is planning to convene a meeting of Vice Chancellors of Law Universities, representatives of Bar and Judiciary to prepare Ten Year Perspective action Plan for Promotion of Indian Languages in Courts and Legal Education.
Further, a committee under chairmanship of Hon’ble (Retd.) Chief Justice of India Sh. Bobde has been constituted by the BCI to recommend measures to enhance the use of Hindi and other Regional languages in Legal Education.
The Ministry of Home Affairs has informed that enabling Constitutional and Legal provisions in this regard are already in place, the minister said.
As per Article 348 of the Constitution and Section 7 of the Official Language Act, 1963 there are provisions of optional use of Hindi and other (Languages included in the 8th Schedule of the Indian Constitution) in the proceedings and judgments etc. of the courts. Under the aforementioned provisions, optional use of Hindi in the proceedings of High Courts of Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar was authorised in the year 1950, 1969, 1971 and 1972 respectively.
New education policy also emphasises the need for promoting Hindi and other regional languages in Legal and other technical education.
The National Education Policy, 2020 in its para 20.4 stated that “Legal education needs to be competitive globally, adopting best practices and embracing new technologies for wider access to and timely delivery of Justice. At the same time, it must be informed and illuminated with Constitutional values of Justice -Social, Economic, and Political and directed towards National reconstruction through instrumentation of democracy, rule of law, and human rights. The curricula for legal studies must reflect socio-cultural contexts along with, in an evidence-based manner, the history of legal thinking, principles of justice, the practice of jurisprudence, and other related content appropriately and adequately. State institutions offering law education must consider offering bilingual education for future lawyers and judges in English and in the language of the State in which the Institution is situated”.
