NEW DELHI: Pointing out a layman’s difficulty in understanding the English language in its ‘legal avatar’, Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud on Tuesday said he has formed a committee chaired by Justice AS Oka and the first step it has taken was to ensure the Supreme Court judgments to be translated into at least four regional languages, starting with Hindi, Tamil, Gujarati and Odiya.
While speaking at the inauguration of the e-inspection software that facilitates online inspection of digitised judicial files at the Delhi High Court, the CJI said that access to justice could not be meaningful unless citizens are able to understand in a language, which they speak and comprehend.
“A very important initiative, which we have adopted recently, is the translation of the judgments of the Supreme Court in regional languages. Because we must understand that the language we use namely English, is a language that 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,” Chandrachud said. Chandrachud said it was aimed that for every high court, there should be two judges, one of whom should be from a district judiciary, with having written experience in the relevant regional languages.
“We are in the process. There is software, which has been developed. We are now creating a team whereby they will use machine learning for the translation of Supreme Court judgments in various Indian languages,” he said further.
The CJI also said that a ‘justice mobile application’ has been launched and it can be accessed by advocates, AORs, journalists, litigants, government departments and every stakeholder in the system.