Kerala HC Becomes First Indian High Court To Commence Publishing Judgments In Regional Language

The Kerala High Court on Tuesday have become the first ever high court to published judgments in its regional language i.e., Malayalam.

In an unprecedented move, two judgements of the Division Bench of Chief Justice S. Manikumar and Justice Shaji P. Chaly in WA 1638/2022 and WA 926/2016 have been made available in Malayalam on the High Court website.

In January 2023, Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud stated that the Apex Court’s judgements would be translated into four languages: Hindi, Gujarati, Odia, and Tamil, citing the fact that the English language in its “legal avatar” was incomprehensible to 99.9% of Indian citizens.

On Republic Day this year, the Supreme Court also proposed releasing 1,268 of its decisions in 13 Indian languages. There were 1,091 judgements translated into Hindi, 21 into Odia, 14 into Marathi, 4 into Assamese, 1 into Garo, 17 into Kannada, 1 into Khasi, 29 into Malayalam, three into Nepali, four into Punjabi, 52 into Tamil, 28 into Telugu, and three into Urdu.

Former President Ram Nath Kovind first proposed the idea, stating that a system could be developed in which certified translated copies of judgements would be made available in the local or regional language.

The Supreme Court considered the proposal in 2019, under the leadership of then-CJI Ranjan Gogoi, and decided to translate judgements into six vernacular languages: Assamese, Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, Odia, and Telugu.

The then-CJI Gogoi had also approved the locally created software produced by the Supreme Court’s electronic software division.

By July 2019, the Apex Court had begun posting decisions in regional languages in a separate tab on the Supreme Court website called “Vernacular Judgments.”

The verdicts of cases that originated in a given state were seen to be translated into that state’s language, and six vernacular translations of the verdicts were seen to be made available. Further verdicts in Malayalam, Tamil, and Hindi were reportedly made available by 2020.