Telangana High Court Publishes First Judgment In Telugu Language

In a first, the Telangana High Court recently published a judgment in Telugu language.  

A division bench of Justice P. Naveen Rao and Justice Nagesh Bheemapaka rendered the judgement in the regional language of Telangana, Telugu. In doing so, the Telangana High Court has become the 5th High Court in the country to render a judgment in a vernacular language.

A note was also attached at the end of the judgment that stated:

“The judgment is being delivered in Telugu for the convenience of the parties. That due to unavailability of contextual Telugu words, and some English words being popular among the common people, they have kept in English for the convenience of the parties. For any clarifications, reference is to be made to the English Judgment.”

This appeal was filed challenging a trial court decree declaring the contested Will as void, not valid and not binding on the defendant as the Will was not executed before two attesting witnesses as mandated by a combined reading of section 63 of the Indian Succession Act, 1925 and section 68 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872. The judgement of the Trial Court was upheld, and the appeal was dismissed.

In 2019, the Supreme Court of India had set up an Artificial Intelligence committee to enhance justice delivery system, under which the SUVAS was developed to translate Judicial Documents and Judicial Orders. In 2020, it started publishing judgments in 6 vernacular languages: Hindi, Punjabi, Malyalam, Odia, Marathi and Tamil, to ensure that all citizens, regardless of their language proficiency, have equal access to legal information and can comprehend the decisions made by the court.

In March this year, the Delhi High Court also started publishing Hindi version of some of the judgments passed this year. Similarly, the Bombay High Court also started uploading select judgements in a separate section on its website in Marathi. The Kerala High Court has also started publishing judgments translated to Malayalam language on test basis.