Staff Reporter
BHUBANESWAR: Scores of judgments were delivered by different courts in Orissa during the past 60 years or so.
But a judgment copy, a lawyer of Titlagarh in Bolangir district received recently on behalf of his client seemed to be a quite different one.
For the first time in history of judiciary of Orissa, a court passed an order in Oriya language following petitions by lawyer Gajanan Mishra in this regard.
Insistence
As a result of lawyer’s insistence on securing order in Oriya language, District Judge of Bolangir and Sonepur has ordered that wherever applications for copy of Oriya judgment were pending, court officials would take steps to grant such copies free of cost.
Mr. Mishra had been filing petitions in Oriya language for last three years and insisting that he be communicated in Oriya. Initially, judges expressed hesitancy but after persuasion he was allowed to submit applications in Oriya, the lawyer said.
When the time of verdict came, the lawyer was handed over an order written in English. He approached registrar of Civil Courts, Bolangir that in turn ruled, “the Oriya copy of the English judgment cannot be provided as there is no such provision.”
Challenging the decision, the lawyer from Titlagarh again approached Orissa High Court, which set aside the earlier decision. It had directed the registrar to reconsider the application seeking Oriya copy of court order in terms of Section 137 (3) of the Code of Civil Procedure within period of 15 days of receipt of the order. “In other states, court orders are being provided in respective native languages. I, however, found Orissa where orders are passed in English. Therefore, I had decided to obtain court order in my mother-tongue,” Mr. Mishra said.
