Centre Says Time To Remove PIL As A Concept; Supreme Court Says "We're Cautious"

The central government during a Supreme Court hearing on the Sabarimala issue on Wednesday questioned the relevance of public interest litigations (PILs) and asserted that it's time to remove them. In response, the Supreme Court indicated to the Centre that there was no need to go down that path as the courts are already cautious while receiving PILs.

The Centre raised the matter after Supreme Court judge Justice BV Nagarathana asked why petitions filed by non-devotees have been admitted in the Sabarimala issue.

The case is over a constitutional challenge - on the balance between women's rights and religious freedom - to the temple's ban on girls and women aged 10-50.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre, while arguing in reference to the Sabarimala case review petitions, urged the Supreme Court's nine-judge constitutional bench to go through his written submissions on the relevance of PILs.

In written submissions filed in the Supreme Court, the central government has said time has come to remove PIL as a concept.

"It is submitted that the time has come not merely to recalibrate public interest litigation, but to remove it. PIL was conceived as an exceptional constitutional device for an era in which vast sections of the population were structurally unable to access courts because of poverty, illiteracy, disability, detention, social exclusion, and the sheer absence of institutional legal support," the written submissions by the central government stated.

Mehta cited the Bandhua Mukti Morcha case and said the PIL jurisdiction began at a time when access to justice was limited. He said that with technological advancements and increased accessibility, including e-filing, people can approach courts directly now.

"Even a letter can reach the court today," he said.

Highlighting the role of legal aid bodies, Mehta said institutions like the National Legal Services Authority and District Legal Services Authorities are available to help those without means.

"In this day and age, why should such PILs be entertained?" he said, adding many PILs today are "motivated" and filed at the behest of undisclosed interests.

Chief Justice of India Surya Kant told the Centre that recently the courts have become very cautious in entertaining PILs.

"The answer is very simple. Nowadays... and 'nowadays' does not mean only the last few years... these Courts themselves have been very, very careful in entertaining PILs. We have laid down parameters to test them. Every day, we examine the real cause. There are several factors we now apply while testing a PIL," Chief Justice Kant said.

"If you sit in court No. 1, you would have seen how many PILs we actually entertain. Notices are issued only when there is substance. Perhaps from 2006 to now, 2026... over these two decades, the situation has evolved, and the court has become more cautious. The point is this: on a general principle of PIL, we may not even need to hear you. We agree with you that the court has to be very cautious in entertaining PILs today, particularly when people come with different kinds of agendas," Chief Justice Kant told Mehta.

The matter came up as the Supreme Court's nine-judge Constitution Bench questioned the maintainability of petitions filed by non-devotees in the Sabarimala case. Justice Nagarathna observed that the original writ petitioners were not devotees of Lord Ayyappa and suggested that such petitions may not have been fit to be entertained at all.

She said no genuine devotee would have challenged the practice and indicated that a petition by non-devotees ought to have been dismissed at the threshold, drawing on principles like Order VII Rule 11 of the Civil Procedure Code, which allows rejection of cases that lack cause of action.

When told that the petition was filed by the Indian Young Lawyers Association, Justice Nagarathna questioned whether a "stranger" to a religious denomination could challenge its practices.

Chief Justice Kant noted that such concerns should have been addressed earlier and pointed out that the 2018 Sabarimala judgment allowed judicial intervention in matters involving grave constitutional issues regardless of locus.

While Mehta cited Justice Indu Malhotra's minority view in the Sabarimala verdict against outsider petitions, lawyer Indira Jaising said the bench is addressing broader constitutional questions beyond Sabarimala, including issues affecting women's rights across religious communities, such as rights of Parsi women and femal genital mutilation practice in Dawoodi Bohra community.

Reasons Behind Centre's Stance Against PILs

The Centre has contended that the justification for PILs rested on a real and pressing access deficit. "The said deficit, though not entirely eliminated, has been substantially addressed through the development of legal aid mechanisms, institutional support structures, and wider channels of access to justice. The constitutional exception has therefore outlived the factual conditions that were once thought to justify it," the submission stated.

"The catastrophic expansion of the PIL docket demonstrates that the exception has swallowed the rule. The increase from 25,000 filings per year in 1985 to 70,836 in 2019, coupled with this Hon'ble Court's own recognition that only 'even a minuscule percentage' of such petitions are genuine, shows that the PIL jurisdiction now operates in a factual vacuum," the central government told the Supreme Court.

"A jurisdiction created to remedy exceptional barriers to justice has instead become a vehicle for agenda-driven litigation, institutional overreach, and judicial diversion from cases brought by directly affected parties," the submissions stated.

The government said the problem is that the existence of the jurisdiction itself incentivises misuse, invites surrogate litigation, and normalises the displacement of the real aggrieved party from the centre of constitutional adjudication.

"Accordingly, PIL should be removed and ordinary principles of locus standi restored. Those whose rights are violated should, as a rule, approach the court themselves, with the assistance of the legal aid and support architecture that now exists for that purpose," the government's submissions stated.

"In the rare case where a person is genuinely incapable of doing so, the solution lies not in preserving a free-floating PIL jurisdiction, but in strengthening targeted procedural devices such as legal guardianship, court-appointed representation, legal aid intervention, and narrowly tailored statutory mechanisms," it said.