New Delhi: The Supreme Court has asked High Courts not to entertain public interest litigation (PIL) petitions seeking to settle personal scores.

A Bench, comprising Justices A.R. Lakshmanan and Altamas Kabir, said: "this court in a catena of decisions held that only a person acting bona fide and having sufficient interest in the proceeding of PIL will alone have locus standi, and can approach the court to wipe out the tears of the poor and needy, suffering from violation of their fundamental rights, but not a person for personal gain or private profit or political or any oblique consideration."

Mr. Justice Lakshmanan said, "it is the duty of the High Court not to allow such process to be abused for oblique considerations and the petitions filed by such busy bodies deserve to be thrown out by rejection at the threshold and in appropriate cases with exemplary costs."

In 1954, the Gujarat Government acquired the land of Kansing Kalusin Thakore and others and alternative lands were allotted to them. But Rabari Maganbhai Vashrambhai and others questioned the allotment in the Gujarat High Court through a PIL plea. The High Court did not quash the allotments, but imposed several conditions. The present appeal was against the conditions.

The Bench said: "The writ petition filed by the respondents is an abuse of the process of the court. By this PIL plea, the respondents sought to ventilate/redress their personal grievances. It is a matter of record that the writ petitioners are the people who encroached upon the land sought to be granted to the appellants, and hence having no legal right to continue their illegal occupancy, devised means to approach the High Court in alleged public interest. The writ petition filed by the respondents was not aimed at redressal of genuine public wrong or public injury, but founded on personal vendetta."

The Bench pulled up the High Court for entertaining such a PIL and said: "The High Court ought to have decided the maintainability of the PIL at the instance of the encroachers and land grabbers and rejected the writ petitions at the threshold."

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail