Prez bats for HC orders in Tamil

In his address at a special convocation of the state-run Dr Ambedkar Law University in Perugundi, the President said that high court orders in vernacular languages would help people to understand them better. Kovind said, “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. Perhaps, a system could be evolved whereby certified translated copies of judgments are made available by high courts in local or regional language,” he said.

“I am happy to learn that some of the high courts have responded to the suggestion positively. The language of certified copies could be Tamil in the Madras High Court or Malayalam in the Kerala High Court, as the case may be,” he said.

Political parties in Tamil Nadu have for long been clamouring for Tamil as a court language in the Madras High Court. The President recalled that he had put forth this suggestion in October 2017 while addressing the valedictory of the diamond jubilee celebration of the Kerala High Court.

Batting for equal access to law for poor and disapproving abuse of adjournments, the President said, “This makes obtaining justice costly for the litigant. It would be a travesty of our republican ethic if a poor person did not get the same access to the law as a rich person,” he said. Kovind congratulated Justice P Sathasivam (Governor of Kerala and former chief justice, Supreme Court), Justice Sharad Arvind Bobde (judge, Supreme Court) and Justice V K Tahilramani (Chief Justice, Madras High Court) who were conferred LL D (Honoris Causa) degrees by the varsity for their distinguished services to law and justice.

“I am told that this is the first time in the country that a university is conferring LL D degrees on three jurists on the same occasion,” he said.