Rajya Sabha Congress member Rama Chandra Khuntia on Sunday urged the State Government and Odisha High Court to make provisions to conduct judicial proceedings in Odia language instead of English from the lower court to High Court level, specifically in the cases relating to illiterate people and labourers.
“An illiterate labourer or person is unable to read and understand the summons sent to them from courts in English language. They even do not understand the arguments of the lawyers in courts relating to their cases and, hence, cannot place their arguments. So, I demand that Odia be used starting from the summon copy to the judgment copy,” said Khuntia.
He slammed the State and Central Governments for their anti-labour policy and flayed the State Government for not spending the money meant for construction workers under its Construction Workers’ Welfare Scheme and targeted the Government for distributing cycles to the construction workers instead of addressing their basic issues.