Public interest litigations cannot be maintained in service matters unless the petitioner is an aggrieved party, as established by the Supreme Court.

JUDGMENT :

Tarlok Singh Chauhan, J.

The instant public interest litigation has been filed by an employee of the H.P. University for grant of the following substantive relief:-

“i. Issue a writ of certiorari to declare the impugned enactment i.e. Himachal Pradesh Recruitment and Conditions of Service of Govt. Employees Act of 2024, dated 07.02.2025 (Annexure P-5) as unconstitutional or ultra vires the Constitution of India thereof.”

2. According to the petitioner, he is aggrieved by the arbitrary, unreasonable and illegal acts of omission and commission on the part of the respondent-State to enact a statute which will deny the fundamental and others statutory rights to employee class by creation of class legislation which is antithetic to the rule of law and the constitutional provisions.

3. It is further claimed by the petitioner that being a citizen of Himachal Pradesh and employee of the H.P. University, he is competent to espouse the cause and has also means to pay the costs, if any, imposed by this Court.

4. We have gone through the entire petition and find that the petitioner has not advocated any cause for himself and still claims to be a party aggrieved. Though he is a total stranger and not intrinsically or otherwise concerned with the rules or effected thereby and even as per petitioner, the instant petition is one filed in public interest.

5. Now, the moot question is whether the public interest litigation can be maintained in service matters. The issue is no longer res intergra and has since long been decided by the Hon’ble Supreme Court in Dr. Duryodhan Sahu and others vs. Jitendra Kumar Mishra and others, (1998) 7 SCC 273, wherein a three Judges Bench of Hon’ble Supreme Court has held that “if public interest litigations at the instance of strangers are allowed to be entertained by the Tribunals, the very object of speedy disposal of service matter would get defeated”. In para-21 of above noted judgment, the Hon’ble Supreme Court has held as under:-

“21. In the result, we answer the first question in the negative and hold that the Administrative Tribunal constituted under the Act cannot entertain a public interest litigation at the instance of a total stranger”

6. In Ashok Kumar Pandey vs. State of West Bengal (2004) 3 SCC 349, the Hon’ble Supreme Court observed as under:-

“16. As noted supra, a time has come to weed out the petitions, which though titled as public interest litigations are in essence something else. It is shocking to note that Courts are flooded with large number of so called public interest litigations where even a minuscule percentage can legitimately be called as public interest litigations. Though the parameters of public interest litigation have been indicated by this Court in large number of cases, yet unmindful of the real intentions and objectives, Courts are entertaining such petitions and wasting valuable judicial time which, as noted above, could be otherwise utilized for disposal of genuine cases. Though in Dr. Duryodhan Sahu and Ors. v. Jitendra Kumar Mishra and Ors. (AIR 1999 SC 114), this Court held that in service matters PILs should not be entertained, the inflow of so-called PILs involving service matters continues unabated in the Courts and strangely are entertained. The least the High Courts could do is to throw them out on the basis of the said decision. The other interesting aspect is that in the PILs, official documents are being annexed without even indicating as to how the petitioner came to possess them. In one case, it was noticed that an interesting answer was given as to its possession. It was stated that a packet was lying on the road and when out of curiosity the petitioner opened it, he found copies of the official documents. Whenever such frivolous pleas are taken to explain possession, the Court should do well not only to dismiss the petitions but also to impose exemplary costs. It would be desirable for the Courts to filter out the frivolous petitions and dismiss them with