The Supreme Court of India will release 1091 Judgements in four regional languages today. The Judgements will be made available in Hindi, Tamil, Gujarati and Odia as a step towards making justice accessible in vernacular languages.

Legal English is difficult to understand for 99.99 percent of people

"I have some news apart from E-SCR and the 34,000 judgments available, we also now have a number of judgments of the Supreme Court in vernacular language. It will be released on the occasion of Republic Day," CJI Chandrachud was quoted as saying.

In CJI's view, legal English is difficult to understand for 99.99 percent of citizens. Therefore making judgments available in regional languages will pave the way for meaningful access to justice.

A step to bridge the gap between citizens and judiciary

Calling it a laudatory thought, Prime Minister Modi had earlier tweeted that the move will help many people.

"At a recent function, the Hon’ble CJI Justice DY Chandrachud spoke of the need to work towards making SC judgments available in regional languages. He also suggested the use of technology for it. This is a laudatory thought, which will help many people, particularly youngsters", he said.

The step to make judgements accessible in local languages is seen as a step towards bridging the gap between the judicial system and the common man. Another dimension to the development is that the use of regional languages in judgements and other documents may also pave the way for better client-lawyer relationships as legal English in its current form is quite verbose and reflects colonial touches in the language of the law.