The Code of Civil Procedure, 1908

§137 — Language of subordinate Courts

(1) The language which, on the commencement of this Code, is the language of any Court subordinate to a High Court shall continue to be the language of such subordinate Court until the State Government otherwise directs. (2) The State Government may declare what shall be the language of any such Court and in what character applications to and proceedings in such Courts shall be written. (3) Where this Court requires or allows anything other that the recording of evidence to be done in writing in any such Court, such writing may be in English; but if any party or his pleader is unacquainted with English a translation into the language of the Court shall, at his request, be supplied to him; and the Court shall make such order as it thinks fit in respect of the payment of the costs of such translation.

State amendments

This section has been amended in its application to Rajasthan. The text above is the central provision and is what applies everywhere else — these amendments are law only in the State that made them.

Rajasthan[Vide Rajasthan Act 7 of 1983, s. 2]Read →Hide
Rajasthan Amendment of section 137, Central Act V of 1908.-In section 137 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 (Central Act V of 1908), in its application to the State of Rajasthan, for sub-section (3), the following sub-section shall be substituted, namely:- "(3) Wherever this Code requires or allows anything other than the recording of evidence to be done in writing in any such court, such writing shall be in Hindi in Devnagri Script with the interna- tional form of Indian numerals : Provided that the court may in its discretion accept such writing in English on the undertaking of the party filing such writing, to file a Hindi translation of the same, within such time as may be granted by the court and the opposite party shall have a right to have a copy of such writing in Hindi."

Reproduced from the same official PDF as the section above, as the amending Act words it — not a consolidated State version of the section. Check the source before relying on it.

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Source & version

Official text: India Code (official) ↗

Official India Code text: The Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 (5 of 1908), English PDF (bitstream 123456789/2191/1/A190805.pdf, 3,275,360 bytes, sha256 8849fc32…) fetched directly from indiacode.nic.in (Akamai edge, DNS via dns.google) on 2026-07-29. Extracted via pdftotext 26.07 -bbox and @nexlex/ingest inline parser. Automated parse; footnotes/amendment history excluded; Schedule I (Orders/Rules) not included in the section list; spot-verified; full clause-level proofread pending.

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