What Public Interest Litigation Is

In one line

Public interest litigation is a proceeding brought by somebody who has suffered no personal wrong, on behalf of people who cannot come to court themselves, and almost everything about ordinary procedure had to be changed to make it possible.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: public interest litigation is a proceeding under Article 32 or Article 226 in which a person acting bona fide, and not himself aggrieved, invokes the jurisdiction of the court to redress a public wrong or to enforce the rights of a person or class who by reason of poverty, disability or a socially or economically disadvantaged position cannot approach the court themselves. It departs from the ordinary adversarial model in who may sue, in the form of the proceeding, in how facts are found, in the remedies granted, and in the court's continuing role after judgment.

Why it had to be invented

The ordinary model assumes a plaintiff who can litigate. He must know his rights, afford a lawyer, and be able to travel and wait.

The people whose rights were most often violated could do none of that. Undertrials, bonded labourers, pavement dwellers, prisoners.

The result was a right that existed on paper. Article 32 was available and nobody came.

So the model was changed. The change was procedural, and it is the largest single piece of judicial creativity in Indian law after Kesavananda.

The five departures from the ordinary model

1. Who may sue. S.P. Gupta v. President of India, AIR 1982 SC 149, is the source.

Facts. Writ petitions filed in different High Courts and transferred under Article 139A challenged the Law Minister's circular on the consent of additional judges, the non-extension of the terms of certain additional judges, and the transfer of two High Court judges. Advocates who were not themselves affected brought the petitions, so their standing was in question.

Held. Where a legal wrong is caused to a person or a determinate class who by reason of poverty, disability or a socially or economically disadvantaged position cannot approach the court, any member of the public acting bona fide may move the court under Article 226 or Article 32. On appointments the majority held that consultation with the Chief Justice does not mean concurrence and that the ultimate power rests with the Central Government.

Why it matters here. It is the constitutional foundation. Every later public interest case rests on this holding, and the appointments holding it was decided alongside has been overruled while this one has not.

2. The form of the proceeding. A letter may be treated as a petition; this is epistolary jurisdiction, worked in the next chapter.