Which of the following statements are correct? 1. Speaker may permit any Member to address the House in his/her mother tongue, if he/she cannot adequately express in either Hindi or English. 2. Business of the Parliamentary Committees is transacted either in Hindi or in English. 3. The minutes of the Parliamentary Committees are prepared invariably in Hindi or English. Select the correct answer using the code given below :
- (a)1, 2 and 3
- (b)1 and 2 only
- (c)2 and 3 only
- (d)1 and 3 only
Correct — A, 1, 2 and 3. All three statements describe the settled language regime of Parliament and its committees. Statement 1 is the proviso to Article 120(1), which reads that the Chairman of the Council of States or the Speaker of the House of the People “may permit any member who cannot adequately express himself in Hindi or in English to address the House in his mother-tongue”. The permission is discretionary and personal to the presiding officer, and the qualifying condition is inability to express oneself adequately in either of the two languages of business. Statements 2 and 3 carry that regime into the committees. A parliamentary committee is a creature of the House and works under its Rules of Procedure, so its business is transacted in Hindi or in English, and its record is prepared invariably in one of those two languages, whatever language a member or a witness may have spoken in. The reason is practical: a committee's minutes and its report have to be usable by the whole House, by the Government and by any court that later reads them.
- (b)1 and 2 only — Drops statement 3, but the record of committee proceedings really is prepared in Hindi or English as a matter of course. A committee that transacted its business in two languages and minuted it in a third would produce a document the House could not act on.
- (c)2 and 3 only — Drops statement 1, which is the most securely grounded of the three — it is written into the proviso to Article 120(1) of the Constitution.
- (d)1 and 3 only — Drops statement 2. Committee business follows the same two-language rule as business in the House itself; there is no separate regime for committees.
Article 120(1) makes Hindi and English the languages in which business is transacted in Parliament, subject to Article 348, with a proviso allowing a member who cannot manage either to speak in his mother tongue by the presiding officer's leave. Article 120(2) was to have dropped English after fifteen years unless Parliament provided otherwise, and Parliament did so through the Official Languages Act, 1963. Article 210 is the exact mirror for State legislatures.
Statements items on language are usually decided by remembering that the Constitution fixes two languages of business and then makes room for a third by permission rather than by right. That asymmetry is what statement 1 is testing, and the word may in the proviso is the whole of it. Statements 2 and 3 extend the same rule to committees, and the honest position on them is worth stating: this card verifies statement 1 against the official text of the Constitution, while statements 2 and 3 rest on the Rules of Procedure of the House, whose rule numbers are not quoted here because the official text was not available to check in this pass. Nothing in the substance is in doubt — the working languages of committee business and of committee records are Hindi and English — and the key marks all three correct.
- Article 120(1): business in Parliament shall be transacted in Hindi or in English, subject to Article 348.
- Its proviso lets the Chairman or the Speaker permit a member who cannot adequately express himself in either language to address the House in his mother tongue.
- Article 120(2) would have dropped English after fifteen years unless Parliament provided otherwise; the Official Languages Act, 1963 provided otherwise.
- Article 210 makes the same arrangement for State legislatures, adding the official language or languages of the State.
- Article 348 requires proceedings in the Supreme Court and every High Court, and the authoritative texts of all Bills and Acts, to be in English until Parliament provides otherwise.
- Reading the mother-tongue proviso as a right rather than as a permission the presiding officer may grant.
- Confusing Article 350A, on mother-tongue instruction at the primary stage, with Article 120's proviso on speaking in the House.
- Assuming Hindi replaced English in 1965; the Official Languages Act kept English in use.
As statements on parliamentary procedure and language, or as a direct Article-number question on where the mother-tongue permission is found.
Which Article of the Constitution provides that it shall be the endeavour of every State to provide adequate facility for instruction in the mother tongue at the primary stage of education?
- (a) Article 349
- (b) Article 350
- (c) Article 350-A
- (d) Article 351
Answer(c) Article 350-A
The other mother-tongue provision, and the one most often confused with this. Article 350A is a direction to States about schooling; the permission to speak in one's mother tongue in the House lives in the proviso to Article 120(1).
- practice — not a real PYQ
The permission for a member to address the House in his mother tongue when he cannot adequately express himself in Hindi or English is contained in
- (a)Article 120
- (b)Article 343
- (c)Article 350A
- (d)Article 351
Answer(a) Article 120 — in the proviso to clause (1); Article 350A deals with mother-tongue instruction at the primary stage and Article 351 with the development of Hindi.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Under Article 348 of the Constitution of India, the authoritative texts of all Bills and Acts of Parliament shall be in
- (a)Hindi
- (b)English
- (c)Hindi or English at the Speaker's discretion
- (d)any language of the Eighth Schedule
Answer(b) English — until Parliament by law otherwise provides; the same Article governs the language of proceedings in the Supreme Court and the High Courts.