Public Interest Litigation and Judicial Review

In one line

Public interest litigation is a case brought by somebody who has suffered nothing, on behalf of people who cannot come to court.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: public interest litigation is litigation initiated in a court of law for the protection of the public interest or of the rights of a class of persons who by reason of poverty, disability or a socially or economically disadvantaged position are unable to approach the court themselves; it rests on a relaxation of the rule of locus standi and on a relaxation of procedure, and is brought under Article 32 or Article 226.

MU's question

The University sets this as a short note on three papers, and on the most recent paper as a lettered head coupled with locus standi. The answer needs its origin, what it changed, an example or two, and its limits, which are in [The Abuse of Public Interest Litigation].

Why it began

Two facts about India in the 1970s. The Constitution gave rights to everybody, and the machinery to enforce them was available in practice only to people who could pay for it. And the courts had emerged from the Emergency needing to re-establish their standing. Public interest litigation is the answer the Court gave to the first problem, and it also served the second.

What was relaxed

Standing. S.P. Gupta v. President of India, AIR 1982 SC 149, worked in [Locus Standi: Who May Ask the Court to Review], allows any member of the public acting bona fide to move the court for a person or a determinate class unable to approach it.

Procedure. A letter or a postcard may be treated as a petition, which is called epistolary jurisdiction; the Court may appoint commissioners to gather facts; and it may give continuing directions instead of a single final order. The authority is Bandhua Mukti Morcha v. Union of India, AIR 1984 SC 802.

Facts. An organisation working against bonded labour wrote to the Supreme Court about the conditions of workmen in stone quarries in Faridabad, alleging bonded labour and inhuman conditions. The letter was treated as a petition under Article 32. The respondents objected that the Court could not conduct a fact-finding enquiry and that a letter was not a petition.

Held. Article 32 does not confine the Supreme Court to any particular form of proceeding, and it may adopt whatever procedure is appropriate, including appointing commissioners to gather facts. A person acting bona fide for a disadvantaged class may move the Court by letter. Detailed directions were given for the identification, release and rehabilitation of bonded labourers.

Why it matters here. It is the authority for both procedural devices, and it shows a court doing something no ordinary civil proceeding permits.