Public Interest Litigations should protect collective rights, but courts must ensure that they are not used for proxy litigation by unqualified parties.

JUDGMENT : 

Soumen Sen, C.J.

1. The Rule of locus standi The rule of is put to an acid test in this Public Interest Litigation. We are not unmindful of the fact that Public Interest Litigation (PIL), which is a judicial creation that evolved in the early 1980s to enable constitutional courts to admit petitions filed by a person who may not be classically defined as a “person aggrieved” and not having a personal interest in the matter, appears to have been necessitated primarily to protect the fundamental rights of marginalised groups and sections of the society who, due to their extreme poverty, illiteracy and ignorance, failed to approach the constitutional courts for redressal of their grievances. As observed by the Hon’ble Supreme Court in the case of Central Electricity Supply Utility of Odisha v. Dhobei Sahoo and Ors., (2014) 1 SCC 161 : AIR 2014 SC 246, it is an adroit innovation of judge-made law within the constitutional parameters and serves as a weapon to mitigate grievances of the poor and marginalized sections of the society, to check the abuse of power at the hands of the executive and to ensure primacy of the rule of law.

2. Voice to the voiceless in the form of a petition by a public- spirited person or an organisation or an association of persons, society, etc. and any organisation of like nature is entertained for their benefit, as they had been denied their fundamental and legal rights. The PIL jurisdiction is also invoked to safeguard the ecology from greedy land grabbers and from the flouting of environmental laws sometimes even by instrumentalities of the State. Such litigation has been characterised by Professor Upendra Baxi as “social action litigation”. Petitions often at the instance of a social activist are admitted and entertained in accordance with the fundamental principles of environmental jurisprudence to protect human beings, flora and fauna and to preserve the ecological system, the imbalance of which would lead us to extinction. These principles have also been extended to the preservation of historical monuments, wildlife and marine life, to mention a few.

3. The constitutional courts have also encouraged and permitted issues to be raised by persons who may not be directly affected by the decision, where such issues concern public administration and misuse of governmental machinery and public funds. The doctrine of public trust is invoked to ensure that the State and its instrumentalities do not put the national assets to misuse, as the Government has a fiduciary duty to protect the vital resources from destruction and depletion. However, in the process of evolution and development and locus standi enlarging the scope of in a Public Interest Litigation, the Courts have experienced that, under the garb of public interest litigations, private interests are pursued and it becomes a publicity-oriented petition. Courts should be extremely chary and cautious to ensure that petitions ostensibly filed as PILs are nipped in the bud with exemplary costs, as no one should be permitted to utilise the process of the Court not for the cause of justice, but for ulterior motives. The persons who are really aggrieved and not ill-equipped in the true sense of the term to approach the constitutional courts for redressal of their grievance, set up bodies or engage others to initiate proxy litigations on their behalf. By the time the Court