It is not easy to secure a place in the book of records for expressing one’s love for the mother tongue. But, this advocate has made this possible.

Pidatala Narasimha Surya Prakash, locally known as P.N.S. Prakash, is a practising lawyer in Punganur town, who shot to fame for bringing Telugu into the legal system. He became the first to file a petition in Telugu, when he had filed one in the Principal Junior Civil Judge’s Court, Punganur, in February 2012. The petition pertains to a civil dispute in Kandur village of Somala mandal in Chittoor district, which was accepted by the judge.

All the arguments were made in Telugu and the order copy summoning the respondent was also drafted in Telugu script. “This memorable day has been placed in the Telugu Book of Records,” reads the citation issued last year by Chintapatla Venkatachari, founder president of the Telugu Book of Records.

The achievement was also acknowledged by Book of State Records, as confirmed by its editor Nataraj. His effort was hailed by noted linguists Mandali Buddha Prasad, Yarlagadda Lakshmi Prasad and Vangapandu Prasada Rao.

When the then acting Chief Justice of Andhra Pradesh High Court Justice N.V. Ramana, participating in the World Telugu Conference in Tirupati, had advised the legal fraternity to employ Telugu to a greater extent, Mr. Prakash started filing all petitions in Telugu.

“After my record feat, I have filed 130 cases so far, all of them in Telugu,” he told The Hindu . Sadly, nobody else in the two Telugu States have followed suit in these four years and Prakash is still the lone advocate to have used Telugu script.

Translation

While regional language reigns supreme in the neighbouring Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, it is out of the reckoning here. “For example, the deponent is called ‘Dhruvakartha’ or ‘Vaangmooladaru’ in Telugu, which none uses. It is quite difficult to translate the legal jargon into Telugu but I believe that comprehension improves with continued use,” asserts Mr. Prakash, who uses Sankaranarayana and Padala Rami Reddy dictionaries for translation.

Four years after P.N.S. Prakash’s record, no petition filed in Telugu yet

Love for

mother tongue

P.N.S. Prakash, a lawyer from Punganur, had filed the petition in Telugu in February 2012

All the arguments were made in Telugu and the order copy summoning the respondent was also drafted in Telugu script

So far, he filed 130 cases so far, all of them in Telugu

Nobody else in the two Telugu States have followed suit and Prakash is still the lone advocate to have used Telugu script