February 12, 2025 - The proceedings of the Parliament will now also be made available in six other languages, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla announced yesterday. These languages are Sanskrit, Urdu, Bodo, Dogri, Maithili and Manipuri.

In addition to Hindi and English, the proceedings of the Parliament are already available in 10 other languages: Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil and Telugu.

Birla said, “Indian legislature is the sole democratic institution in the world providing simultaneous translation services in several languages. Every world forum has appreciated the idea of simultaneously translating the proceedings into 22 languages.”

He added that as human resources become available, effort would be made to make translations in other languages as well.

The inclusion of Sanskrit has faced opposition from Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK). Dayanidhi Maran, DMK Member of Parliament, questioned its addition, arguing that Sanskrit is “not communicable” and not an official language of any State.