PILs for Democracy: Exploring the Nature of Judicial Power in Indian High Courts

Abstract

Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in India was posited by the Supreme Court in its post-emergency phase to bring justice within the reach of the impoverished masses. Widely believed to be an attempt to regain the legitimacy lost during the emergency days, PIL has also been an important instrument for the judiciary to self-enhance its powers, vis-à-vis the elected organs of government.  Consequently, there is a perceived departure of the focus of PIL from the issues of the poor to issues of governance, especially in the contemporary era, bearing a significant impact on the interrelationship of law, politics and democracy in India.  While India has a hierarchical judicial system, the Supreme Court and the High Courts have concurrent writ jurisdictions on which PIL is based. However scholarly works have predominantly focused on the transformation of the power of the Supreme Court through PIL and not the middle tier of the judicial architecture, even though the High Courts are more accessible for everyday affairs. The present paper aims to address this academic gap to understand how PIL is used by interested litigants before the High Courts and how the High Courts, as the middle tier of the judicial architecture, respond to the same. Exploring the reported PIL judgments of the Calcutta High Court during the period 2014-2019, the present paper aims to address the above issues to contribute to the academic conversation on PIL about the exercise of judicial power.