Public Interest Litigation In India: Boon Or Misuse - An Analytical Examination Of Its Evolution, Achievements, And Abuse
Jatin Malhotra, B.B.A. LL.B., Bharati Vidyapeeth University
ABSTRACT
Public Interest Litigation (PIL) represents one of the most consequential jurisprudential innovations in the history of Indian constitutional law. Originating in the late 1970s and consolidated through a series of landmark judgments delivered by Justices P.N. Bhagwati and V.R. Krishna Iyer, PIL fundamentally reconceived the doctrine of locus standi to allow any public- spirited individual to approach the Supreme Court under Article 32 or a High Court under Article 226 on behalf of persons who, by reason of poverty, social disadvantage, or physical incapacity, are unable to seek judicial redress for violations of their constitutional or legal rights. In the four decades since its inception, PIL has been the vehicle for some of the most transformative judicial interventions in Indian legal history, including the Hussainara Khatoon series of orders that led to the release of approximately forty thousand undertrial prisoners, the Vishaka guidelines on workplace sexual harassment, the Olga Tellis ruling on the right to livelihood, the M.C. Mehta environmental judgments, and the PUCL right to food orders. This paper examines the twin dimensions of PIL: its enormous contribution to access to justice and the enforcement of socio-economic rights for India’s most vulnerable populations on the one hand, and the progressive dilution of that contribution through systematic misuse on the other. It traces the evolution of PIL from a tool for the socially marginalised to an instrument increasingly deployed for private interests, political purposes, or mere publicity, and examines the Supreme Court’s own jurisprudential response to this dilution through decisions such as Dattaraj Nathuji Thaware, State of Uttaranchal v. Balwant Singh Chaufal, and Ashok Kumar Pandey. The paper further considers structural reforms proposed by the Law Commission of India in its 228th Report and argues that the long-term legitimacy and effectiveness of PIL as a constitutional institution depends on the development of a robust screening mechanism, the consistent imposition of costs for frivolous petitions, and a principled doctrinal distinction between genuine public interest and private interest masquerading as such.
Keywords: Public Interest Litigation; Locus Standi; Judicial Activism; Access to Justice; PIL Misuse; Constitutional Remedies
