PM Modi supported demand to make Tamil official language of Madras High Court: Judge

Justice G. Jayachandran discusses the push for Tamil as the official language of the Madras High Court.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had supported the demand for making Tamil as the official language of the Madras High Court when he served as the Chief Minister of Gujarat in 2013, said Justice G. Jayachandran of the Madras High Court on Friday.

He said so, while felicitating Bombay High Court retired judge Mridula Bhatkar on the release of a Tamil translation of her English book titled ‘I must say this’ in which she had narrated the travails faced by her during her tenure in the judiciary.

The book translated jointly by former Madras High Court judge P.N. Prakash and visually challenged Senior Civil Judge T.D. Chakravarthi, and published by the Alliance Publishing House, was released at the Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry auditorium (BCTNP) in Chennai.

In his address, Justice Jayachandran said, the translators suffered to find apt Tamil words for many legal jargons and that the absence of a comprehensive and authoritative English-Tamil legal lexicon was the reason for Tamil not having been made an official language of Madras High Court so far.

He recalled that the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly had passed an unanimous resolution in 2007 for declaring Tamil as the official language of the High Court. A letter written by the then Chief Justice, A.P. Shah, to the State government, was also discussed by the Assembly before passing the resolution.

In that letter, the then Chief Justice had made it clear that the judges of the High Court had no objection to declare Tamil as the official language of the court, if they could be provided with necessary infrastructural facilities, such as proper legal books in Tamil, good translators and Tamil stenographers.

After that, a Joint Conference of Chief Ministers and Chief Justices was held in New Delhi on April 7, 2013. The then Chief Minister, Jayalalithaa, could not attend the conference but her speech was read out by the then Law Minister, K.P. Munusamy, demanding the declaration of Tamil as the official language of the High Court.