Tamil Nadu Pushes for Tamil in Madras High Court

The Tamil Nadu Assembly has unanimously adopted a resolution urging the Union government to make Tamil the primary language of the Madras High Court, covering petitions, arguments, and judgments. Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay, who moved the resolution, pointed to advances in legal translation technology and artificial intelligence that now make simultaneous Tamil-to-English rendering feasible.

The resolution rests on constitutional and statutory provisions, including *Article 348(2)* of the Constitution and *Section 7* of the *Official Languages Act, 1963*, both of which allow state languages in High Court proceedings with gubernatorial and presidential authorisation. It also notes that Tamil already functions in subordinate courts under the *Tamil Nadu Official Language Act, 1956*.

This is not the state's first attempt; a similar resolution passed in 2006 stalled after the Supreme Court's Full Court declined to endorse it in 2012. Lawmakers across party lines, including DMK's S. Regupathy and AIADMK's C. Ve. Shanmugam, invoked past leaders' efforts on the issue, with Shanmugam also proposing renaming the court itself as the Tamil Nadu High Court.