: Madras High court bench today admitted a review petition against the dismissal of PIL that challenged the circular of the Registrar General on January 5,1994, giving option to sub-ordinate courts' judicial officers to write Judgments in Tamil or English.
One Solai Subramanian had challenged the circular on the ground that no timeframe was mentioned in the circular as per the G.O.
Justices V.Ramasubramanian and V M Velumani admitted the review petition,and posted it for hearing next week.
A division bench had dismissed the PIL in 2013 on the ground that the Tamilnadu Official Languages Act had vested powers with the High court to pass a general or special order, permitting presiding officers of civil/criminal courts and tribunals to write orders in English in such circumstances.
The present notification (circular) took note of the difficulties of the officers, whose mother tongue was not tamil. The Acts were in english,and were yet to be translated into tamil and supplied to the court. The circular was issued based on full court resolution.The Judges said non mentioning of the time-frame(to give option to write in english or tamil)was not illegal.
The review petition was by a a third party, P Rathinam and that too, after a 370 day delay of dismissal of the petition.
The review Petitioner said that law books and Journals were available in tamil now, as also dictionaries. To grant permission to judiciary officers to write their judgements in english should have a time frame.
