Hindi Names Of New Criminal Laws Are The Wisdom Of Parliament, Do Not Affect Any Rights: Centre Tells Madras High Court

Additional Solicitor General ARL Sundaresan informed the bench of Acting Chief Justice R Mahadevan and Justice Mohammed Shaffiq that the parliament, in its own wisdom had named the new laws and unless these were shown to be inherently illegal/unconstitutional, they cannot be interfered with.

“It's the wisdom of the parliament. All of us have elected the parliament and these lawmakers, on their wisdom have named it. Their will is shown in the names. If it's against the constitution, then okay. But no rights are affected,” Sundaresan said.

The counsel for the petitioner informed the court that as per Article 348 of the Constitution, all authoritative text was to be in English. He pointed out that the names of the new laws was also an authoritative text, which was to be quoted by lawyers often. He thus argued that the names should also be in English.

To this, the ASG argued that the names of the new laws were also in English as English letters were used. He added that with the passage of time, the public as well as the lawyers would get accustomed to the new names. He further submitted that the names of the new laws did not affect the fundamental rights of any person warranting an interference by the court.

The ASG also argued that the interim prayer of the petition, seeking to restrain the Home Secretary from implementing the new law was not maintainable.

The court then asked the petitioner to not push for the interim relief. The court also noted that a similar petition was pending in the Kerala High Court. The court then said that it'll wait for the proceedings before the Kerala High Court and adjourned the case.

“As of now, I don't want to say anything on this. We'll post it on the 23rd. The Kerala case is on 22nd. We'll post after that,” the court said and adjourned the case.

Case Title: B Ramkumar Adityan v Cabinet Secretary and Others

Case No: WP 17877 of 2024