Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Friday wrote to Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad requesting that all Supreme Court judgments should be made available in Malayalam also.

In his letter, Pinarayi said it is unfortunate that when the decision has come that all apex court judgments will be issued in seven regional languages, Malayalam was excluded.

"Malayalam language has a rich history and Kerala is known for its literacy, educational status and social tradition and hence it would be in the fitness of things that the apex court judgments are available in Malayalam too.

"Kerala government has already taken a stand to get all the Kerala High Court verdicts in Malayalam and hence we are making the request," said Vijayan.

The Supreme Court recently released the first set of the copies of its judgments in seven vernacular languages, including Tamil, Kannada and Telugu. This comes as part of the court’s initiative to make available the copies of judgments in the regional languages of India. While the first copies of the judgements in Kannada and Telugu were made available on Wednesday, two judgements in Tamil were uploaded on Thursday.

Earlier in July, the Supreme Court had announced that it will be making available its judgments in regional languages. It had also announced that these regional language translations of its verdicts will be ready for download for the general public from the end of July. The English copies are currently available for download on the same day of the verdict and the regional translations would be made available in a week’s time.

The idea, which was mooted by President Ram Nath Kovind in 2017, was approved by the Chief Justice of India recently.

With IANS inputs