The Madras High Court Advocates Association has filed a public interest litigation petition in the Madras High Court, challenging the constitutional validity of a 1965 Union Cabinet Committee decision that keeps English as the common language of the Supreme Court and every High Court in the country until Hindi can replace it. The First Division Bench of Chief Justice Sushrut Arvind Dharmadhikari and Justice G. Arul Murugan will take up the case on Monday, November 2, 2026.

The association says the bar on 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. That is the legal core of the challenge, and it is aimed squarely at a decision most lawyers in the state have never seen.

MHAA secretary S. Arivazhagan said in his affidavit that the association only learned of the 1965 Cabinet decision last year. An advocate had obtained the details under the Right to Information Act, 2005. The association chose to challenge it now, it said, and it did not want the old decision to get in the way of a long-pending demand: making Tamil the official language of the Madras High Court.

A 1965 letter that never went public

The trail starts with a conference of Chief Justices of all High Courts, held in the first week of March 1965 under the chairmanship of the then Chief Justice of India, P.B. Gajendragadkar. The resolutions were never released to the press. 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 said the conference recommended that the Supreme Court and all High Courts share a common language. English, it said, should continue in that role “until in due course Hindi becomes rich and ripe enough to take its place.” The conference also recommended that regional languages should not be introduced as the languages of High Courts.

The Ministry of Home Affairs then put up a note before a Cabinet Committee set up to consider different aspects of regional language policy. The note is dated May 17, 1965. It warned of practical problems if there were no common language, including difficulty in elevating High Court judges to the Supreme Court and in lawyers appearing before various High Courts and the Supreme Court.

The note went further, and that is the passage the petitioners keep returning to:

“One of the major unifying factors in the country is a unified judicial system with a common language and uniform way of functioning in High Courts. Nothing should be done that is likely to weaken the present system. There can be little doubt that if regional languages were permitted to be used in the High Courts, we would be moving towards fragmentation of the judicial system, and it would not be possible to maintain for long the unitary character of the judicial system with the Supreme Court at the apex. An all-India bar of any sort cannot also continue to exist.”

The Cabinet Committee considered the note and approved it on May 21, 1965.

The consent rule and the convention nobody wrote down

The fight is not only about English versus regional languages. It is about how Article 348(2) of the Constitution works in practice. That article allows Governors, with the previous consent of the President, to authorise the use of regional languages in High Court proceedings. Judgements, decrees and orders are excluded from that authority.

The Ministry’s note argued that the President would be justified in denying consent, since the CJI and the Chief Justices of the High Courts had opposed regional languages. It also suggested a convention: the CJI should be consulted before the President gave consent to any such proposal.

The MHAA’s objection is narrower than a blanket rejection of consultation. The association said it was not against the judiciary being consulted. Its grievance is that a consultation has been treated as mandatory consent from the CJI. It asks a sharper question: how can a new procedure be created through an executive decision when Article 348(2) prescribes no such requirement?

Tamil proposals rejected, a 2026 resolution in limbo

According to the MHAA, the Centre has already turned down proposals from the Tamil Nadu government in December 2006 and June 2014 that would allow Tamil in the proceedings of the Madras High Court. A later resolution passed by the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly on September 3, 2026, has no known outcome yet. The association has demanded that the Centre be directed to disclose its decision.

The association also pointed to what it calls inconsistency. Proposals from West Bengal, Gujarat and Karnataka, sent in 1997, 2012 and 2014 to allow Bengali, Gujarati and Kannada in their High Court proceedings, were rejected by the Centre. Yet Hindi has been permitted in several High Courts. Rajasthan High Court was allowed to use Hindi as far back as 1950. Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar followed in 1969, 1971 and 1972, through orders of the Governors under Article 348(2) with Presidential consent.

“The authorisations for Hindi in Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar demonstrate that English need not remain the exclusive language of every High Court proceeding,” the MHAA concluded.

That line is the sharpest part of the association’s case. It does not ask the court to ban English. It asks why one language gets an exception in some courts and not in others, and why the same request is treated differently depending on the State making it.

Two petitions, one demand

The Madras High Court case is not the only filing. The Madurai Bar Association of the Madurai Bench, represented by its secretary R. Venkatesan, has filed a separate PIL petition. It seeks a declaration that litigants have a right to file pleadings, advance oral arguments and receive judgements, orders and decrees in a language they understand.

Advocate M. Velmurugan filed that case. It asks the court to direct the Centre to take all necessary steps under Article 348(2) of the Constitution and Section 7 of the Official Languages Act, 1963. The aim is to declare Tamil the primary language of the Madras High Court and its Madurai Bench.

Two separate petitions now press the same question on one bench. For litigants who cannot follow proceedings in English, the answer decides whether they can argue their own cases and understand the orders that bind them. For the Centre, the answer means reopening a 1965 position that was built on fears of a fragmented judiciary.

Monday’s hearing is the first test. The court will have to decide whether the 1965 decision is open to challenge at all, and whether the Centre must explain a decision it has never published in full.