Gujarat Governor Devvrat pushes for conducting proceedings of court in mother tongue

Among initiatives inaugurated by Chief Justice of India-designate Justice UU Lalit, Gujarat HC Chief Justice Aravind Kumar, Supreme Court’s Justice MR Shah and Gujarat CM Bhupendra Patel, along with the Governor, were, a revamped website of Gujarat State Legal Services Authority, a socio psychological care centre for prisoners at Sabarmati Central Jail by GSLSA in association with Raksha Shakti University, and release of a Gujarati translation of

‘Jansamast and Kaydo’, a book of frequently asked questions with respect to legal provisions. Noting that several states such as Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan have taken to conducting judicial processes in the mother tongue, Devvrat questioned why the rest of the states cannot do the same.

“We are people of an independent country now and we should take our nation forward. There’s Russia, China, Japan, Germany – they’ve all become superpowers – don’t they communicate in their own language?…What’s the need to preserve the legacy (of English language) of those (Britishers) for which many fought the freedom struggle, became martyrs, so as to throw them out.”

The Gujarat High Court Advocates’ Association had written to the Governor on August 14, seeking that Gujarati language be allowed in addition to English in court proceedings before the HC.

Meanwhile, CJI-designate UU Lalit, who joined the event virtually, appreciated the initiative of the psycho-social care centre in the prison and advocated that there should be a uniformity of such systems across the country, along with de-addiction centres established at jails so as to reform youngsters arrested for narcotic drugs-related offences, along with advocating for open prisons.

Citing that 90 per cent of the prison population in the country are undertrials and with conviction rate in all criminal matters being less than 30 per cent, arithmetic shows that 63 undertrial prisoners of the 90 are bound to get acquitted.

“So these 63 persons out of 100 prisoners, they are maybe in the prison because of delay, because of the systemic kind of difficulties that we cannot conclude the trials at an early date. Normally all the psychologists actually find that a person enters the prison, almost 10% of them come back to the prison. So, they are, what is called in psychological terms, repeaters to the prison. And these repeaters at times actually are because of what the conditions in the prison are. These undertrials, may feel completely cornered on the psychological front,” said Justice Lalit.

Suggesting other reformative steps that can be undertaken for prisoners, Justice Lalit added, “There are youngsters who are between the ages of 18 to 25 years who landed in jail for the first time. These youngsters as well as some of those persons who get arrested because of their involvement in psychotropic substances or narcotic substances, especially those who are addicts, need special care. De-addiction centers must also get established in almost all
prisons.”

Additionally, Justice Lalit suggested that children of incarcerated women, who are brought up in jails for no fault of theirs, as well as juveniles in juvenile justice homes, must be extended special care. “I found in one of the prisons in Bombay, that there were at least about nine or 10 children who were in jail not because of anything wrong done by them, but their mothers were there in the jail, and there was nobody outside who could take care of them. The prison authorities can take those children in a bus to a nearby school so that their education doesn’t get affected.

My suggestion to all the jail authorities here would be that in case any such children are, as a result of any compulsion, residing inside the jails, then please extend every possible help and create a situation where their extracurricular activities are not hampered.”