Now SC judgements to be made available in Odia

Bhubaneswar: Good news for litigants, who are not conversant with English, the Supreme Court decided to make its judgements in six Indian languages on its official website by the end of this month.

According to media reports, the apex court judgements will be translated into six regional languages — Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Assamese and Odia.

For this purpose, Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi reportedly has cleared a software indigenously developed by the Supreme Court’s electronic software wing.

As per the move, the SC judgements written in English will be first uploaded on and the translated versions will be made available on its website a week later.

The initiative came after President Ram Nath Kovind had highlighted this idea at a conference in saying that there is a need for translation of the court judgements in regional languages for the non-English speakers and to be made available by the High Courts.

“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 judgement may escape him or her. The litigating parties will thus be dependent on the lawyer or another person to translate the judgement. This is can add to time and cost,” the Prez said at the valedictory function of the Diamond Jubilee Celebrations of High Court of Kerala in October 2017.

“Perhaps a system could be evolved whereby certified translated copies of judgements are made available by the Honourable High Courts in the local or regional languages. This could happen in a period of say 24 or 36 hours after the judgement is pronounced. The language could be Malayalam in the Honourable Kerala High Court or Hindi in the Honourable Patna High Court, as the case may be,” he said.