Old news clip of Supreme Court accepting a petition filed in Hindi is being shared without any context - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
April 21, 2022
A social media post accompanying an image of a news clip with Hindi headline which loosely translates to ‘For the first time Supreme Court hearing will be held in Hindi’ is being widely shared recently. Through this article let’s fact-check the veracity of the clip shared in the post.
Claim: News Clip that says Supreme Court hearing will be held in Hindi for the first time.
Fact: This is an old news, that dates back to 2016. In 2016, after initial refusal, Supreme Court has accepted a petition filed in Hindi by Bramhadev Prasad, a Bihari lawyer. Multiple news agencies have reported the news back then. This news is now being shared without any context. Hence the claim is MISLEADING.
Lately, there are no reports of the Supreme Court accepting petitions in Hindi. The viral news clip is old and dates back to 2016. A keyword search on Facebook yielded multiple posts which shared the same clip back in 2016 (here & here).
Thus taking a cue from these posts, further search on Google applying a time filter, yielded us a couple of news reports that published the same news back in 2016 (here & here). As per these reports, after an initial refusal, the Supreme Court of India had accepted a Bihari lawyer’s Hindi petition. Initially, the court registrar refused to file the petition citing Article 348 (1) of the constitution, which provides that all proceedings in the Supreme Court and in every High court shall be in the English Language until Parliament by law otherwise provides.
However, Bramhadev Prasad, the petitioner argued against the court decision, referred to article 19, which provides freedom of speech and expression. Further, he referred to articles 300, 351 & 13 in favour of his argument and ultimately the court accepted his petition.
From this, it is evident that the viral news clip also talks about the same issue reported in the above news articles, as the name of the petitioner mentioned in the articles and the viral clip is the same.
It is worth mentioning that the Supreme court in 2016 dismissed a PIL seeking direction to amend the Constitution to make Hindi as an official language of work in the apex court and High Courts, dubbing it a frivolous PIL.
To sum it up, an old news clip of the Supreme Court accepting a petition filed in Hindi is being shared without any context, and as a recent incident.