WHAT IS PUBLIC INTEREST LITIGATION (PIL) : In the late ‘70s, but more definitively in the early ‘80s, the Supreme Court devised an institutional mechanism in public interest litigation (PIL). PIL opened up the court to issues concerning violations of rights, and nonrealisation of even bare non-negotiables4 by diluting the rule of locus standi; any person could move the court on Public Interest Litigation. In the late ‘70s, but more definitively in the early ‘80s, the Supreme Court devised an institutional mechanism in public interest litigation (PIL). PIL opened up the court to issues concerning violations of rights, and nonrealisation of even bare non-negotiables4 by diluting the rule of locus standi; any person could move the court on behalf of a class of persons who, due to indigence, illiteracy or incapacity of any other kind were unable to reach out for their rights. In its attempt to make the court process less intimidating, the procedure was simplified, and even a letter to the court could be converted into a petition.5 In its early years, PIL was a process which • recognised rights and their denial which had been invisibilised in the public domain. Prisoners, for instance, hidden amidst high walls which confined them, found a space to speak the language of fundamental and human rights. • led to ‘juristic’ activism, which expanded the territory of rights of persons. The fundamental rights were elaborated to find within them the right to dignity, to livelihood, to a clean environment, to health, to education, to safety at the workplace….The potential for reading a range of rights into the fundamental rights was explored. Individuals, groups and movements have since used the court as a situs for struggle and contest, with varying effect on the defining of what constitutes human rights, and prioritising when rights appear to be in conflict.
Posted on: Sun, 16 Jun 2013 14:31:58 +0000
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