Rajya Sabha MPs can now speak in House in 22 Indian languages

New Delhi, July 18

Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu on Wednesday announced that the Upper House now had facility for simultaneous interpretation in all 22 Indian languages after addition of five more languages.

Members could now also speak in Dogri, Kashmiri, Konkani, Santhali and Sindhi, he said on the opening day of the Monsoon Session of Parliament.

Of the 22 scheduled languages, the Rajya Sabha earlier had simultaneous interpretation services for 17 languages, including Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.

However, members will have to give a prior notice for the interpreter in the secretariat.

Naidu said there might be some shortcoming in the beginning as translators might not be attuned to the speed of the speaker.

He said members were free to follow suggestions.

Describing it as a wonderful gesture, Subramanian Swamy said efforts should be made to include Sanskrit words in the vocabulary.

Naidu also mentioned that the Rajya Sabha had for the first time in 66 years signed a pact with a parliamentary institution of a foreign nation when it entered into an MoU with the Senate of Rawanda earlier this month.

The MoU provides for inter-parliamentary dialogue and parliamentary exchange visits among others, he said.

Till now, only the Lok Sabha used to enter into such kind of agreements with foreign parliamentary institutions. PTI