Public Interest Litigation (PIL)

Origin and Development

• Originated in the USA in the 1960s.
• Designed to provide legal representation to unrepresented groups and interests.
• Recognizes the failure of the ordinary marketplace to provide legal services to significant segments of the population.
• Groups and interests include: the poor, environmentalists, consumers, racial and ethnic minorities, and others.

PIL in India

• Closely related to judicial activism.
• The emergence of PIL is mainly attributed to the judicial activism role of the Supreme Court.
• Most popular form of judicial activism.
• Introduced in the early 1980s.
• Pioneers: Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer and Justice P.N. Bhagwati.
• Also known as Social Action Litigation (SAL), Social Interest Litigation (SIL) and Class Action Litigation (CAL).

Meaning of PIL

• Facilitated by the relaxation of the traditional rule of 'locus standi'.
  • Traditionally, only a person whose rights are infringed can move the court for remedies.
• PIL is an exception to this rule.
• Any public-spirited citizen or a social organization can move the court for the enforcement of rights of disadvantaged persons unable to approach the court themselves due to poverty, ignorance, or socio-economic disadvantages.
• Any member of the public having 'sufficient interest' can approach the court for enforcing the rights of others and redressal of a common grievance.
• Defined by the Supreme Court as a legal action initiated in a court of law for the enforcement of public interest or general interest where the public or a class of the community has pecuniary interest or some interest by which their legal rights or liabilities are affected.
• Necessary for maintaining the rule of law, furthering justice, and realizing constitutional objectives.
• Purposes:
  • Vindication of the rule of law
  • Facilitating effective access to justice for the socially and economically weaker sections
  • Meaningful realization of fundamental rights

Features of PIL

1. Strategic arm of the legal aid movement to bring justice to the poor.
2. Different from traditional litigation, which is of an adversary character.
3. Intended to promote and vindicate public interest.
4. Demands redressal of violations of constitutional and legal rights of large numbers of poor, ignorant, or socially/economically disadvantaged people.
5. Cooperative effort between the petitioner, the State or Public Authority, and the Court to secure observance of constitutional/legal rights, benefits, and privileges for vulnerable sections and achieve social justice.
6. Undertaken for redressing public injury, enforcing public duty, protecting social, collective, diffused rights/interests, or vindicating public interest.
7. Court's role is more assertive, creative rather than passive, and assumes a more positive attitude.
8. Court enjoys flexibility but must adhere to judicial tenets and characteristics of a judicial proceeding.
9. No determination or adjudication of individual rights.

Scope of PIL

• In 1988, the Supreme Court formulated guidelines for entertaining letters or petitions as PIL, modified in 1993 and 2003.

• Categories for PIL entertainment:

  1. Bonded labour matters.
  2. Neglected children.
  3. Non-payment of minimum wages and exploitation of casual workers (except individual cases).
  4. Petitions from jails about harassment, premature release, etc.
  5. Petitions against police for refusing to register a case, harassment, death in custody.
  6. Petitions against atrocities on women.
  7. Petitions complaining of harassment of villagers belonging to Scheduled Caste/Tribes and economically backward classes.
  8. Petitions about environmental pollution, ecological balance, drugs, food adulteration, heritage/culture maintenance, forests/wildlife, and other matters of public importance.
  9. Petitions from riot victims.
  10. Family pension.

• Cases not entertained as PIL:

  1. Landlord-tenant matters.
  2. Service matters and those pertaining to pension/gratuity.
  3. Complaints against Central/State Government departments and Local Bodies (except those relating to item numbers 1-10).
  4. Admission to medical and other educational institutions.
  5. Petitions for early hearing of cases in High Courts/Subordinate Courts.

Principles of PIL

• The Supreme Court evolved the following principles in regard to PIL:
  1. The Court can entertain a petition filed by any interested person for the welfare of disadvantaged people not in a position to knock the doors of the Court.
  2. When issues of public importance, enforcement of the fundamental rights of large number of people vis-à-vis the constitutional duties and functions of the State are raised, the court treat a letter or a telegram as a PIL.
  3. Whenever injustice is meted out to a large number of people, the court will not hesitate to step in to invoke Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution of India as well as the International Conventions on Human Rights which provide for a reasonable and fair trial.
  4. The common rule of locus standi is relaxed to enable the court to look into the grievances complained on behalf of the poor, deprived, illiterate and the disabled who cannot vindicate the legal wrong or legal injury caused to them for violation of any constitutional or legal right.
  5. When the Court is prima facie satisfied about violation of any constitutional right of a group of people belonging to the disadvantaged category, it may not allow the State or the Government from raising the question as to the maintain-ability of the petition.
  6. Although procedural laws apply on PIL cases, the question as to whether the principles of res judicata or principles analogous thereto would apply depend on the nature of the petition and also facts and circumstances of the case.
  7. The dispute between two warring groups purely in the realm of private law would not be allowed to be agitated as a PIL.
  8. However, in an appropriate case, although the petitioner might have moved a Court in his/her private interest and for redressal of the personal grievances, the Court in furtherance of the public inter-est may treat it necessary to enquire into the state of affairs of the subject of litigation in the interest of justice.
  9. The Court in special situations may appoint Commission or other bodies for the purpose of investigating into the allegations and finding out facts. It may also direct management of a public institution taken over by such Commission.
  10. The Court will not ordinarily transgress into a policy. It shall also take utmost care not to transgress its jurisdiction while purporting to protect the rights of the people from being violated.
  11. The Court would ordinarily not step out of the known areas of judicial review.
  12. Ordinarily the High Court should not entertain a writ petition by way of PIL questioning constitutionality or validity of a statute or a statutory rule.

Guidelines for Admitting PIL

• Should not be allowed to become Publicity Interest Litigation or Politics Interest Litigation or Private Interest Litigation or Paisa Interest Litigation or Middle-class Interest Litigation (MIL).
• The Supreme Court observed that "PIL is not a pill or a panacea for all wrongs. It was essentially meant to pro-tect basic human rights of the weak and the disadvantaged and was a procedure which was innovated where a public-spirited person files a petition in effect on behalf of such persons who on account of poverty, helplessness or economic and social disabilities could not approach the court for relief. There have been, in recent times increasingly instances of abuse of PIL. Therefore, there is a need to re-emphasise the parameters within which PIL can be resorted to by a petitioner and entertained by the court."
• The Supreme Court laid down the following guidelines for checking the misuse of the PILS:
  1. The Court must encourage genuine and bona fide PIL and effectively discourage and curb the PIL filed for extraneous considerations.
  2. Instead of every individual Judge devising his/her own procedure for dealing with PIL, it would be appropriate for each High Court to properly formulate rules for encouraging the genuine PIL filed and discouraging PIL filed with oblique motives.
  3. The Court should prima facie verify the credentials of the petitioner before entertaining the PIL.
  4. The Court shall be prima facie satisfied regarding the correctness of the contents of petition before entertaining the PIL.
  5. The Court should be fully satisfied that substantial public interest is involved before entertaining the petition.
  6. The Court should ensure that the petition which involves larger public interest, gravity and urgency must be given prior-ity over other petitions.
  7. The Court before entertaining the PIL must ensure that the PIL is aimed at redressal of genuine public harm and public injury. The Court should also ensure that there is no personal gain, private motive or oblique motive behind filing PIL.
  8. The Court should also ensure that the peti-tion filed by busybodies for extraneous and ulterior motives must be discour-aged by imposing exemplary costs or adopting similar novel methods to curb frivolous petitions and the petitions filed for extraneous considerations.