Public Interest Litigation in India: Origin, Growth and Limits

Public Interest Litigation (PIL) is a petition filed in the Supreme Court under Article 32 or in a High Court under Article 226 of the Constitution by a person who is not personally injured but who raises a genuine public wrong, usually on behalf of people too poor or powerless to reach the court. It grew out of judge-made relaxations of locus standi in cases such as Hussainara Khatoon (1979) and S.P. Gupta, and today the courts insist on bona fides, verified facts and a real public interest before they will hear one.

This explainer is for B.A. LL.B. and LL.B. students preparing for constitutional law papers and for citizens who want to know when a PIL is the right tool and when it is not. A student in Nagercoil who sees a polluted canal and a resident of Madurai worried about a public road both need the same answer: what the court will accept, and what it will throw out with costs.

Where does PIL come from in the Constitution?

There is no separate "PIL Act". PIL rests on two constitutional provisions:

• Article 32 gives the right to move the Supreme Court by appropriate proceedings to enforce the fundamental rights in Part III, and gives the Court power to issue directions, orders or writs such as habeas corpus, mandamus, prohibition, quo warranto and certiorari.
• Article 226 gives every High Court power, "notwithstanding anything in article 32", to issue the same writs to any person or authority within its territory, for enforcing Part III rights "and for any other purpose". That last phrase makes the High Court's power wider than Article 32.

The innovation was not in the text but in how the judges read "appropriate proceedings". They stopped insisting that only the injured person could knock on the door, and they began treating letters and newspaper reports as petitions.

How did PIL begin? The first phase

In State of Uttaranchal v. Balwant Singh Chaufal (2010) 3 SCC 402, decided on 18 January 2010, the Supreme Court divided the history of PIL into three phases. The first phase dealt with orders made mainly to protect fundamental rights of people who could not approach the court themselves. The leading cases from this phase are:

• Hussainara Khatoon v. Home Secretary, State of Bihar, AIR 1979 SC 1369: a petition about undertrial prisoners held in Bihar jails for long periods without trial. It remains the starting point for any answer on speedy trial and access to justice.
• S.P. Gupta v. Union of India, AIR 1982 SC 149 (the Judges' Transfer case): the Court relaxed the traditional rule of standing and allowed advocates to challenge decisions on the transfer of judges.
• People's Union for Democratic Rights v. Union of India (1982) 3 SCC 235: quoted in Chaufal for the idea that PIL is "a cooperative or collaborative effort" by the petitioner, the State or public authority and the judiciary.
• Bandhua Mukti Morcha v. Union of India, AIR 1984 SC 802: a petition by an unregistered association on behalf of bonded labourers was held maintainable.

How did PIL grow? The second and third phases

According to the Court in Balwant Singh Chaufal, the second phase concerned ecology, environment and forests, and the third concerned probity, transparency and integrity in governance. Two examples students should know:

• M.C. Mehta v. Union of India (1987) 1 SCC 395, one of the many environmental petitions filed by M.C. Mehta, and among the authorities the Supreme Court relied on in Shiv Shankar Sharma (2022).
• Vishaka v. State of Rajasthan (1997) 6 SCC 241: a writ petition under Article 32 brought by activists and NGOs, not by the woman harmed. With no statute on workplace sexual harassment, the Court issued guidelines to protect the rights of working women under Articles 14, 19 and 21. Chaufal lists it among the PIL decisions on gender justice.

The Supreme Court also built an administrative system for letter petitions. Its PIL guidelines, based on a Full Court decision of 1 December 1988 and modified on 19 August 1993 and 29 August 2003, route letters through a PIL Cell, which screens them and sends qualifying ones to a judge nominated by the Chief Justice of India for directions. The guidelines list the categories ordinarily entertained, including bonded labour, neglected children, non-payment of minimum wages, jail grievances, custodial death and refusal by police to register a case, atrocities against women, harassment of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, environmental pollution, riot victims and family pension. A letter about an individual labour dispute will not qualify, even under the labour heading, because the guidelines exclude individual cases there.

What are the limits on PIL today?

The same guidelines list matters that will not be treated as PIL: landlord and tenant disputes, service matters including pension and gratuity, admissions to medical and other educational institutions, general complaints against government departments outside the listed categories, and requests for early hearing of cases pending elsewhere. Maintenance claims for a wife, children or parents are pointed to the criminal court or a civil suit. The guidelines still cite Section 125 CrPC; since 1 July 2024 the equivalent provision is Section 144 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023.

In Balwant Singh Chaufal (paragraph 181), the Court told courts to:

1. encourage genuine PILs and discourage those filed for extraneous reasons;
2. have each High Court frame its own PIL rules;
3. verify the petitioner's credentials first;
4. be prima facie satisfied that the contents are correct;
5. be fully satisfied that substantial public interest is involved;
6. give priority to petitions of larger public interest, gravity and urgency;
7. ensure the aim is to redress genuine public harm, with no personal gain or oblique motive;
8. discourage busybodies, including by exemplary costs.

Other limiting cases include Janata Dal v. H.S. Chowdhary (1992) 4 SCC 305, BALCO Employees' Union v. Union of India (2002) 2 SCC 333 and Ashok Kumar Pandey v. State of West Bengal (2004) 3 SCC 349. On 7 November 2022, in State of Jharkhand v. Shiv Shankar Sharma, a three-judge bench (Chief Justice U.U. Lalit, Justices S. Ravindra Bhat and Sudhanshu Dhulia) set aside a Jharkhand High Court order entertaining PILs that rested on "mere allegations and half baked truth". The petitioner had not disclosed an earlier PIL on similar allegations, dismissed by the High Court in 2013 with costs of Rs 50,000, and had not approached the statutory authorities or registered an FIR. The Court rejected the view that the High Court's PIL rules were only directory, calling non-disclosure a clear breach of Rule 4-B of the Jharkhand rules.

The common mistake in that case is the one most often made by first-time petitioners: treating a PIL as a shortcut past the police, a regulator or a statutory tribunal. If a statute gives you a forum, go there first, and disclose every earlier petition on the same subject.

How does the Madras High Court handle PIL?

The Madras High Court's rules page lists the Madras High Court Writ Rules, 2021, a separate set of amendments to those rules, and the Public Interest Litigation Rules. Under the Writ Rules, public interest litigation is among the categories that are posted before a Division Bench, alongside habeas corpus petitions and challenges to the validity of Acts, Rules or Regulations. Before filing in the Principal Seat or the Madurai Bench, read the current text of both sets of rules on the High Court website. Disclosure and affidavit requirements are set there, and Shiv Shankar Sharma shows what happens when they are ignored.

How should you write about PIL in an exam?

• Open with a one-line definition tied to Articles 32 and 226.
• Explain the shift from the traditional rule of locus standi to representative and citizen standing, citing S.P. Gupta and Bandhua Mukti Morcha.
• Use the three phases from Balwant Singh Chaufal as your structure, with one case per phase.
• Close with limits: the 1988 guidelines, paragraph 181 of Chaufal and Shiv Shankar Sharma (2022).
• Add a critical line on judicial overreach versus access to justice. Examiners reward balance.

Students who want to see public interest work at ground level can volunteer with the college legal aid clinic.

Sources

• Supreme Court of India, PIL guidelines: categories of letter petitions entertained and excluded.
• State of Jharkhand v. Shiv Shankar Sharma (2022): Supreme Court judgment reproducing the Chaufal guidelines.
• State of Uttaranchal v. Balwant Singh Chaufal (2010): text of the judgment on the three phases of PIL.
• Madras High Court, Rules: Writ Rules, 2021 and Public Interest Litigation Rules.
• LawFoyer, case summary of Balwant Singh Chaufal: decision date and costs.
• TaxTMI, Madras High Court Writ Rules, 2021: categories posted before a Division Bench.