Former chief minister J H Patel, who was elected to the Lok Sabha from Shimoga in 1967 from the erstwhile Samyukta Socialist Party (SSP), created history by speaking in Kannada in the Parliament.
The veteran socialist was the first MP to speak in a regional language in the Lok Sabha, where the debates and the discussions happened only in English and Hindi.
The then Lok Sabha Speaker Neelam Sanjiva Reddy, who hailed from the then undivided Andhra Pradesh, had encouraged Patel to continue his speech in Kannada.
(Published 18 April 2024, 13:17 IST)
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