Public Interest Litigation Semester: III/VII

Every monsoon, an open manhole on a Mumbai road swallows a pedestrian. No single victim has the money or the time to sue the civic body, and those harmed are scattered across the city. Yet the danger is public and the duty to fix it is public. Can a concerned citizen, who was never hurt, ask the High Court to order the repair? Public Interest Litigation says yes, and it asks the drafter to write a very different kind of petition.

In two minutes

A PIL is a writ petition under Art.32 or Art.226 filed not for the petitioner's private gain but for a section of the public that cannot easily approach the court; it is drafted like a writ petition with extra pleadings on who the petitioner is, what public injury is alleged and why the petitioner is a bona fide person.

The rest of this chapter

The full explanation, the cheat sheet, every previous-year question at every mark weight, the quiz and the answer skeletons are part of Drafting, Pleading and Conveyancing – I on LexBlox Semester. Sign in to unlock the subject, or read Module 1 of Legal Language and Writing free.