Translation services extended to 6 new languages in Parliament: Om Birla

Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla on Tuesday announced extension of translation services to six new languages in the Parliament including Bodo, Dogri, Maithili, Manipuri, Urdu and Sanskrit.

Addressing the House, Birla said that previously, the translation services were available in 10 languages including Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, and Telugu, in addition to Hindi and English.

"Now, we have also included six more languages--Bodo, Dogri, Maithili, Manipuri, Urdu, and Sanskrit. Along with this, for the additional 16 languages, as human resources become available, we are making efforts to provide simultaneous translations in those as well," he said.

"India's parliamentary system is a democratic framework that provides translations in so many languages. When I discussed at the global level that we are making this effort in 22 languages in India, everyone on the international platforms praised it. Our effort is that, for the 22 languages that are officially recognized, we aim to include them in the future as well," Om Birla said.

DMK MP Dayanidhi Maran objected to Lok Sabha Speaker's announcement, asking why public money is being wasted on simultaneous translation in Sanskrit, which is spoken by only 70,000 people as per census.

"It is not communicable in any of states in India. Nobody is speaking that. 2011 population survey said that only 73,000 people are supposed to be speaking. Why should the taxpayer's money be wasted because of your RSS ideologies?" Maran argued.

Reacting to this, the Speaker pulled him up and asked which country he was living in.

"This is India, whose "Mool Bhasha" has been Sanskrit. That's why we mentioned 22 languages, not just Sanskrit. Why did you have an issue with Sanskrit?" Birla asked.