Eye on their domestic constituencies, MPs opt for native tongues

Swati.MathurNew Delhi: Ahead of the general elections, the last sitting of the 17th Lok Sabha is seeing a large number of Parliamentarians switching to their native tongues to deliver what might be their farewell speeches in lower House.During Wednesday’s discussion on the Interim Budget in Lok Sabha, for instance, Tamil Nadu MPs cutting across parties participated in the debate in Tamil. While DMK’s Dayanidhi Maran and T Sumathy, and Congress’ Jothimani spoke in Tamil, Shiv Sena (Uddhav) faction’s Vinayak Raut spoke in Marathi. Karnataka MPs Pratap Simha intervened in the discussion in Kannada and was joined by Tejaswi Surya, who has delivered speeches in English and even intervened in Hindi.During the budget discussion, IUML’s Abdussamad Samadani, a scholar and writer, spoke in Malayalam with a smattering of Hindi. Punjab MPs Harsimrat Kaur Badal and Congress’ Ravneet Singh Bittu, meanwhile, held forth in Punjabi.Though MPs delivering speeches in their native language is not unusual, and both Houses have a fair number of polyglots, the ‘Vocal in Local’ pitch appears to be an outreach to constituents back home ahead of the polls.The trend continued Thursday, with Union minister Jyotiraditya Scindia underscoring his Maratha antecedants and responding to a question hour intervention on civil aviation in Marathi, and Congress’ Manish Tewari, eloquent in English and Hindi, turning to Punjabi to make a zero hour intervention on farm distress and the plight of farmers in Punjab.For MPs to speak in any of the 22 scheduled languages spoken in India, they must give prior notice to Lok Sabha Table office to ensure that appropriate translations are made available for the rest of the members. The Lok Sabha secretariat then facilitates real-time translation of MPs speeches for the benefit of other members.