Plea in Delhi High Court: Allow DU Law entrance exam in Hindi

You have brought a very important issue before us, the Delhi High Court said on Tuesday, on a PIL seeking directions to Delhi University to conduct entrance examinations for its law course in Hindi.

“Aap bahut acha aur important issue lekar aaye ho. Hum sarkar aur dusri parties ko notice de rahe hain. Wo log apna jawab dakhil karenge. (You have brought before this court a very important issue. We are issuing a notice to the Centre and other parties concerned. They will have to file their response on the issue),” a bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C Hari Shankar said.

It also issued a notice to the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Ministry of Law and Justice, Bar Council of India, Delhi University and its Law Faculty, asking them to file their counter-affidavits on the issue in three weeks.
The court listed the matter for further hearing on May 17.

It also communicated to the petitioner, Ayush Tiwari, that there is an order of the court (of a single judge and division bench) passed on a similar issue in 2014, and that he should read that. The 20-year-old petitioner, a final-year BA student from Allahabad who was representing his case in person before the High Court, replied in Hindi that he will go through the judgment, but added that he should be allowed to take the DU LLB entrance exam in Hindi. The petitioner, in his plea filed through advocate Kamlesh Kumar Mishra, said he is “desirous of studying law, however, since he has got all his education in Hindi medium, it would be unfair for him to take the entrance exam in English when on the contrary DU Law Faculty allows term examination of LLB to be taken in Hindi”.

With the Union Public Service Commission and certain central universities holding the examination in Hindi, the plea sought to conduct of entrance examination for LLB along the same lines. While dismissing the PIL in 2014, the High Court’s division bench had observed: “We cannot shut our eyes also to the fact that the language of the courts, particularly in Delhi, primarily remains English and the judgments of the courts are pronounced and reported in the English language.”

The bench had said that the use of English language is also necessitated owing to the present-day policy of transfer of judges of the High Court and of the Chief Justice from courts from other states, who may or may not be versed in the Hindi language. The earlier petition was also dismissed by a single-judge bench of the High Court, after which the petitioner had filed an appeal before the division bench.
News Source (Indian Express)