The State government has been taking steps to urge the Centre to make Tamil the official language in Madras High Court, even though the plea was rejected twice by the full Bench of the Supreme Court, Law Minister C. Ve. Shanmugam told the Legislative Assembly on Friday.
In his reply to P. Sivakumar alias Thayagam Kavi (DMK), who raised the issue in the House, Mr. Shanmugam said the Chief Minister had written to the Centre on March 3 in this regard.
Countering Mr. Sivakumar’s question on the delay in adopting Tamil as official language in the Madras High Court, Mr. Shanmugam questioned why the DMK was unable to ensure this when in power between 2006 and 2011, although it was a partner in the coalition government at the Centre then.
The plea for adopting Tamil as official language in the Madras High Court was rejected twice — once in 2012 and again in 2015, he said. “However, we have been repeatedly urging the Centre over the issue,” Mr. Shanmugam said. He recalled that both the AIADMK and the DMK were of the same opinion in this regard.
S. Semmalai (AIADMK) urged the State government to take action on adopting Tamil as official language in the High Court. “When the courts in four States can have Hindi as official language in respective States, why not Tamil,” he asked.
As for Mr. Semmalai’s request to set up a Supreme Court Bench in Chennai and contention that there were attempts to lobby for setting it up in other States, Mr. Shanmugam said that the Supreme Court maintained that there was no such proposal. “The Principal Bench [of the Supreme Court] is against having its Benches anywhere in the country,” the Minister said. Mr. Semmalai urged the government to prevent efforts to shift the Intellectual Property Appellate Board out of Chennai and Tamil Nadu.
