Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu on Wednesday announced that the Upper House now has facility for simultaneous interpretation in all 22 Indian languages after addition of five more languages.
Members can now also speak in Dogri, Kashmiri, Konkani, Santhali and Sindhi, he said on the opening day of the Monsoon Session of Parliament.
Of the 22 scheduled languages, the Rajya Sabha earlier had simultaneous interpretation services for 17 languages including Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.
However, members will have to give a prior notice for the interpreter in the secretariat.
Naidu said there may be some shortcoming in the beginning as translators may not be attuned to the speed and velocity of the speaker.
He also said that members are free to follow suggestions.
Describing it as a wonderful gesture, Subramanian Swamy said efforts should be made to include Sanskrit words in the vocabulary.
Naidu also mentioned that the Rajya Sabha has for the first time in 66 years signed a pact with a parliamentary institution of a foreign nation when it entered into an MoU with the Senate of Rawanda earlier this month.
The MoU provides for inter-parliamentary dialogue and parliamentary exchange visits among others, he said.
Till now, only Lok Sabha used to enter into such kind of agreements with foreign parliamentary institutions.
PTI
