Telangana SIR: High Court Asks EC to Consider Urdu Forms In Seats With Over 20% Speakers

New Delhi: The Telangana high court on Monday (June 29) asked the Election Commission (EC) to consider supplying Urdu-language enumeration forms under its special intensive revision in the state in constituencies where more than 20% of the population speaks the language.

It also made oral remarks questioning the EC's submission that providing enumeration forms in multiple languages would be an arduous task, reports said. A copy of the bench's order is awaited.

According to the Deccan Chronicle, the EC's counsel Avinash Desai submitted on Monday that the poll body is equipping booth-level officers (BLOs) with ‘dummy’ enumeration forms in English and in Urdu to act as a reference for electors who do not read Telugu, in which the poll body is printing all forms outside Hyderabad district.

When Desai said that printing enumeration forms in multiple languages would be a tall order, Justice B. Vijaysen Reddy noted that the EC is carrying out an exercise of ‘enormous democratic significance’ and asked why the poll body could not supply forms in different languages when SIM card packages, phone user manuals and product catalogues could do so, the Chronicle reported.

Ultimately the judge said that in light of the EC's decision to give English and Urdu dummy forms to BLOs and its accommodation in Hyderabad district, he would only ask the commission to consider printing enumeration forms in Urdu in those constituencies where more than 20% of the population speaks the language, LiveLaw reported. He posted the matter for its next hearing on July 9.

"Nowhere in India you have two forms?...one side English, one side Telugu, one side English one side Urdu you don't have?...Election Commission of India is a body conducting elections in the largest democracy in the world. You should have answers and solutions. You should not say not possible. People is the democracy. Will of people is democracy...This is off the record comments and has nothing to do with case. But ECI should know that democracy is will of the people...What for we fought for independence? I'm tell you. Petitioners may not have argued...What for we got this independence?...The person does not know what is his right..." the court remarked orally.

Though the state government's socio-economic and caste survey last year does not have constituency-level data, it indicates that only in the erstwhile Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation's jurisdiction does over 20% of the population speak Urdu as its mother tongue. Nowhere does the figure cross 20%, with the next highest percentage occurring in Nizamabad district at 18%.

M.A. Mujeeb, the petitioner in the case, has challenged the EC's move to distribute enumeration forms in Telugu only in Telangana and alleges that it is meant to exclude linguistic minorities from the voter rolls.

After political parties met the EC and expressed serious concern over the issue given Hyderabad city's cosmopolitan character, the poll body agreed to supply enumeration forms in English as well as Telugu in Hyderabad district, where some 43% of the population spoke Urdu as their mother tongue per the 2011 census.

However this relaxation does not apply to those substantial parts of the city falling under the semi-urban Medchal-Malkajgiri and Rangareddy districts.

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