‘Telugu copy not full version of Draft T Bill’

Hyderabad: The Secretariat of AP Legislative Assembly failed to place the full-fledged translated copies of Telangana Draft Bill in Telugu and Urdu languages.

Telugu version of the Bill had a note saying, “It is not full-fledged translation of the English copy of Telangana Draft Bill. For full details, please see English copy, which will be available in Assembly website”.

Interestingly, the statement of reasons for taking the decision by President Pranab Mukherjee was not given to the members in the English copy too. The statement of reasons of President is very important and the members should be given it because it is not a secret document, the members felt.

The Secretariat took the decision of translating the draft Bill on Saturday and asked the law department to take up the work. But, the law department wanted one week’s time to translate the draft Bill in Telugu and Urdu. It approached the director of translation and the assembly officials received the same answer from them. Then, the Secretariat decided to translate the English copy in Telugu on its own. But, the officials did not come to conclusion till Sunday morning whether to translate all the matter in the draft Bill or take the gist of the Bill.

Sources said, “The officials decided to translate the draft Bill into Telugu by excluding schedules of the draft Bill due to various reasons including lack of time.

Likewise, the officials faced a tough time in translating the Telangana Draft Bill into Urdu language. The translator of Urdu language, reliably, had no time to translate 65-page draft bill. With this, the Secretariat decided to give a gist of the draft Bill in Urdu language. Because of this, a 10- page Urdu language draft bill was placed for the members. MIM legislators felt unhappy over the half-hazard way translating the draft bill in to Urdu language.