Public Interest Litigation Before the Punjab & Haryana High Court: A Primer

Public interest litigation is not a separate jurisdiction. It is the ordinary writ jurisdiction of the High Court under Article 226 of the Constitution, exercised at the instance of someone who is not personally aggrieved. Everything else — the writs available, the standard of review, the discretion to refuse relief — remains the same. What changes is who may knock on the door, and how carefully the Court examines that person before it opens it.

The classical rule of locus standi was that only the person whose own right had been infringed could move the Court. That rule was relaxed from the late 1970s onward for a simple reason: the people most seriously affected by State inaction — undertrial prisoners, bonded labourers, residents of a polluted village, patients in a public hospital — are the least able to reach a High Court. The relaxation is not a licence. It allows a person acting in good faith, without personal gain or oblique motive, to move the Court on behalf of those who cannot, or on a matter affecting the public at large. It does not allow a litigant who has lost a tender, a promotion or a family property dispute to re-file the same grievance with a public label attached, and the Punjab & Haryana High Court regularly dismisses such petitions with costs.

What qualifies, then. A petition is treated as a public interest litigation where the injury complained of is suffered by the public or by a determinate but disadvantaged class, where the relief sought would benefit that class rather than the petitioner alone, and where the petitioner has no personal stake in the outcome. A grievance about a municipality's failure to treat sewage discharged into a canal is public interest. A grievance that the same sewage floods one petitioner's plot is a personal writ petition, and should be filed as one. The Court looks past the label to the substance of the relief claimed.

Locus standi in practice is tested through the petition itself. The Punjab & Haryana High Court's rules on public interest litigation require the petitioner to disclose their full credentials — identity, occupation, means of livelihood, income and any public work previously undertaken — to state on affidavit that there is no personal interest in the subject matter and no collateral motive, to disclose whether any other proceeding on the same subject is pending anywhere, and to state the source of the information on which the petition rests. A representation to the authority concerned, made before approaching the Court, is expected in almost every case; a petition filed without giving the authority the chance to act is frequently disposed of by directing that the representation be decided. Where the petitioner is an organisation, its registration, objects and office-bearers must be set out.

Filing is otherwise conventional. The petition is drafted under Article 226, verified on affidavit, and filed with the annexures — photographs, official reports, right-to-information replies, newspaper reports where reliable, expert or statutory reports where available — that establish the factual foundation. Vague assertions are fatal; the Court will not undertake an inquiry to discover whether the alleged state of affairs exists. The respondents are the State of Punjab, the State of Haryana or the Union Territory of Chandigarh through the appropriate department, together with the specific statutory authority whose duty is alleged to have been breached; a petition against a nameless "concerned authority" goes nowhere. The matter is listed before a Division Bench, and at the motion hearing the Bench decides whether to entertain it at all. If it does, notice issues, the State files a reply, and the Court often calls for a status report from the authority, appoints a Local Commissioner or a committee to inspect, or takes the assistance of an amicus curiae. Relief in a successful PIL is usually a continuing mandamus — directions to the authority with the matter kept pending for compliance — rather than a single final order.

The subjects that recur before the Court at Chandigarh reflect the region. Environmental matters dominate: groundwater depletion and unregulated tubewells, paddy stubble burning and air quality, discharge of untreated effluent into the Ghaggar and Sutlej, illegal sand and gravel mining, solid-waste management in the municipal corporations, and felling of trees or construction in the Shivalik foothills and around Sukhna Lake. Public health and civic administration follow: conditions in district hospitals, availability of doctors and medicines in rural dispensaries, food adulteration, prison overcrowding and the treatment of undertrials, and the state of shelters for the destitute. Governance and public property form the third cluster: encroachment on panchayat and municipal land, unauthorised colonies and violations of building byelaws and master plans, irregularities in public recruitment and in the award of contracts, non-payment of dues to labourers on public works, and the failure of statutory bodies — pollution control boards, development authorities, regulators — to discharge functions the statute assigns them. Road safety, illegal hoardings and the misuse of official vehicles and accommodation also appear with some regularity.

There are limits the Court enforces. It does not sit in appeal over policy: a PIL may test whether a policy is arbitrary or contrary to statute, but it cannot ask the Court to substitute a better policy. It does not entertain a petition where an effective statutory or alternative remedy exists — a complaint before the pollution control board, a reference to the National Green Tribunal, or a consumer forum — unless that remedy has failed or is inadequate. It does not entertain service disputes as PIL at all; a third party cannot litigate someone else's promotion or transfer. And it does not entertain a petition brought at the instance of a rival, a disgruntled contractor, or a person funded by an undisclosed interest — publicity interest litigation and private interest litigation, as the Supreme Court has called them, are dismissed and costs imposed.

The difference from a personal writ petition is worth stating plainly, because it decides how a matter should be framed. In a personal writ petition the petitioner asserts their own legal right, the facts are confined to their own case, delay and the availability of a statutory appeal are judged against their own conduct, the relief runs to them alone, and the petition is normally heard by a single Judge. In a public interest litigation the petitioner asserts no right of their own, the Court examines credentials and motive at the threshold, the factual foundation must be documented rather than personal, the matter is heard by a Division Bench, the relief operates in favour of a class or the public and is often supervised over months or years, and the petitioner cannot withdraw or settle the matter at will once the Court has taken it up. Where the same facts give rise to both a personal grievance and a public wrong, the correct course is usually to file the personal writ petition on one's own behalf and, if the public dimension warrants it, to disclose it candidly rather than to disguise the personal claim.

Practical advice for anyone considering a petition: make the representation to the authority first and keep proof of it; gather documents, right-to-information replies and official reports before drafting rather than promising them in the petition; identify the exact statutory duty that has not been performed and the officer or body charged with it; disclose every prior or parallel proceeding; and be prepared for a long matter, because a serious PIL is measured in years of compliance hearings rather than in a single judgment. A petition that is precise about the duty breached and the direction sought stands a far better chance at motion hearing than one that describes a general malaise.

Manuja Advocates advises on whether a grievance is properly a public interest litigation or a personal writ petition, drafts and files petitions under Article 226 before the Punjab & Haryana High Court at Chandigarh, appears through the compliance stage, and carries matters to the Supreme Court of India where required. To discuss a matter, call +91 9711964964, message on WhatsApp, or write to manujalawyers@gmail.com.