Saturday 18 June 2016

History of PIL in India

Kapila Hingorani had filed the first petition in December, 1979. It concerned the prisoners of Bihar jail. The petition was not filed by an individual prisoner; it was filed by several prisoners of the jail. The bench head was Justice Krishnam Malhotra at this time in Supreme Court. The petition was popularly known as Hussainara Khatoon Vs State of Bihar, since it was filed in the name of Hussainara Khatoon, who was also a prisoner.

Being a student of law, at any of the Law Universities in India, you must know about Kapila Hingorani and the history of PIL. Some more important details are given below.

There were about 40,000 prisoners who awaited the hearing of their case in court. Hence, Supreme Court offered then free legal aid and also speeded up the hearing process. Eventually, they got rid of jail. Until that time, the term Public Interest Litigation had not been assigned to this case. The Supreme Court of India defined this term PIL during the case of SP Gupta vs. Union of India.

The purpose of PIL is to safeguard the rights of people and provide social justice timely with law on their side. The aggrieved party would access the courts till 1980s. The high court also started reaching out to people post emergency time. The purpose was to formulate a way for the people so that they could access court and explore legal remedies for the sake of public interest.

The first judges who admitted PILs in court were Justice V. R. Krishna Iyer and Justice P. N. Bhagwati. Generally filing a legal case is found to be more burdensome than a PIL. In past there have been cases where the telegrams/ letters were also treated as PILs.

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