The conception of Public Interest Litigation is of American origin. It was designed to provide legal representation to previously unrepresented groups and interests which include the poor, the environmentalist, the consumer, racial and ethnic minorities and others. The British rule bestowed upon India a colonial legal heritage, where adjudication insisted upon performance of procedural technicalities such as “locus standi” and adherence to adversarial system of litigation. As result, the Courts were accessible only to the rich and influential people and the disadvantaged groups continued to be exploited and denied basic rights. The emergency period (1975-1977), witnessed colonial nature of Indian legal system. The post emergency period promoted an occasion for the judges of the Supreme Court to openly close their eyes to these obstructions of stringent modus operandi in providing access to justice to the poor. Two dynamic judges of the Supreme Court, Justice V.R.Krishna Iyer and Justice P.N. Bhagawati recognized the possibility of providing access to justice to the poor and exploited people by relaxing the rule of standing. Public Interest Litigation emerged as a result of an informal nexus of judges, media persons, social activists and lawyers. Thus in 1980, the Hon’ble Supreme Court has developed a procedure which facilitates any public spirited citizen or social activist to organize favorable judicial concern on behalf of the subjugated classes. The first reported case of PIL was Hussanara Khatoon vs. State of Bihar AIR 1979 SC 1360. It focused on inhuman condition of the prisons and under trial prisoners. It was filed by an advocate on the basis of a news report highlighting the light of thousands of under trialed prisoners languishing in jails. Right to speedy justice emerged as a basic fundamental right which had been denied to the prisoners. Later on several PIL cases were reported by various social activists and lawyers on behalf of the oppressed classes.
A very good initiative taken by the judges of supreme court! In a country like India, where poor is the majority and if basic justice is denied to them then there would be no meaning to the existence of Indian judiciary and law. Since people are becoming aware of such laws, PIL is being used by many NGOs and social activists to fight anomalies in the governance and trial by judiciary.
