Justice Patel on PILs: Origin and Evolution

“This form of litigation originated in India in late 1970s and 1980s… may be due to the Emergency when civil liberties were suspended, political dissent was suppressed and thousands were detained without trial. After the Emergency, the judiciary sought to regain public trust and to reaffirm its role as a guardian of constitutional rights. The Supreme Court realised that access to justice in India was limited to the educated, rich and powerful while the majority of citizens were rural and illiterate with no meaningful access to court. Certain judges expanded the concept of locus standi and allowed petitions in the form of letters, petitions and postcards and treated these as writ petitions, giving birth to the epistolary jurisdiction. The judiciary consciously adopted an activist approach to bring justice to prisoners, bonded labourers, women, slum dwellers, children, tribal population…”

“The expansion of PIL jurisprudence, in which our courts thought it fit to step in, have been criticised for several decades as we have seen. Today, those criticisms are getting louder and sharper… are courts truly venturing into the exclusive reserves of the executive and the legislature, are they blurring the boundaries set?… are they actually disrupting the balance in the fabled doctrine of separation of powers?… Is the court supposed to sit idle when the other two organs fail to do what they are constitutionally bound to do?…”