Madras High Court Advocates Association challenges 1965 Union Cabinet decision to continue English as common language for Supreme Court and all High Courts

The Madras High Court Advocates Association (MHAA) has filed a public interest litigation petition in the High Court challenging the constitutional validity of an Union Cabinet Committee’s 1965 decision that English should continue as the common language for the Supreme Court and all High Courts in the country until it could be replaced with Hindi.

First Division Bench of Chief Justice Sushrut Arvind Dharmadhikari and Justice G. Arul Murugan would be hearing the case on Monday (November 2, 2026). MHAA has contended that the bar imposed on use of regional languages in High Courts violates Articles 14 (right to equality), 19 (freedom of speech and expression) and 21 (right to life) of the Constitution.

In his affidavit MHAA secretary S. Arivazhagan said, the association came to know about the 1965 Cabinet decision only last year from an advocate who had obtained the details under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005 and hence it had chosen to challenge it now. The assocation did not want the Cabinet decision to hamper the long pending demand to make Tamil as the official language of Madras High Court.

MHAA said, a conference of Chief Justices of all High Courts in the country was held in the first week of March 1965 under the chairmanship of the then Chief Justice of India (CJI) P.B. Gajendragadkar. The resolutions passed in the conference were not released to the press but they were forwarded to Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, Union Home Minister Gulzarilal Nanda and all Chief Ministers on March 26, 1965.

The CJI’s letter to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) stated that the conference had recommended that the Supreme Court and all High Courts should have a common language, English should continue to be such common language “until in due course Hindi becomes rich and ripe enough to take its place” and that regional languages should not be introduced as languages of High Courts.

Subsequently, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) put up a note before the Cabinet Committee, constituted to consider different aspects of regional language policy, on May 17, 1965. The note read that there would be difficulty in elevating High Court judges to the Supreme Court and also in the appearance of lawyers before various High Courts and the Supreme Court if there was no common language for these courts.