Mandatory For Petitioners To Mention The Public Interest Involved, Also If They Have Personal Interest In The Case
Ahmedabad: In order to curb frivolous and vexatious litigation in the name of public interest, Gujarat High Court has formulated rules and regulations for regulating the filing of public interest litigations (PILs) in the state. However, the high court is open to letters, which are also treated as PILs.
The changes in rules named as Gujarat High Court (Public Interest Litigation) Rules, 2010, will soon be inserted in the Gujarat government gazette.
To discourage sponsored litigation in the name of PIL, the new rules have made it mandatory for the petitioner to disclose before the court whether it was filed with his own funds or from that of others. If the PIL is funded by others, particulars regarding source of fund and the fee paid to lawyer must be divulged before the court.
The newly-formed rules cover the entire gamut of the PIL jurisprudence and compel the petitioners henceforth to indicate clearly whether they had any personal interest in the case besides specifically mentioning what is the public interest involved in his litigation. The new rules also call for declaration by petitioners whether any personal damage was caused to him.
The high court has made filing of PIL little difficult in the name of organisations.
As per the norms now, only authorised person of the organisation will be able to file PIL and the petitioner will also have to disclose whether he is supported by any organisation.
Moreover, PIL petitioners will have to disclose information about themselves enough for the court to make out what is their social status, concern, antecedents, including whether they faced contempt of court proceedings in the past.
This perhaps is to discourage habitual PIL petitioners, because they will now have to disclose source of information also in regards with subject of PIL. HC has just made task of PIL petitioners bit tough that they will inform the court about similar PIL filed earlier or they themselves have filed any PILs seeking similar relief earlier. Along with a notification, the HC has also prepared a format for filing of PIL charting out details required to be disclosed.
The registrar general of the high court PP Bhatt said that the rules have been made pursuant to the Supreme Court’s order in this regard. The high court embarked on the exercise to curb avoidable PILs, in view of an SC judgement delivered on January 18, 2010, by a bench comprising Justice Dalveer Bhandari and Justice MK Sharma in the State of Uttaranchal vs Balwant Singh Chaufal case.
It said courts should ensure that there was no personal gain, private motive or oblique motive behind the PIL, and added that petitions filed by busybodies for extraneous and ulterior motives should be discouraged by imposing exemplary costs or by adopting similar novel methods.
LETTERS TO BE TREATED AS PILs
- Involving issue of bonded labour
- Less than minimum wages prescribed by the government
- Neglected children
- Atrocity on community or villagers by authorities, police
- Riots-affected persons
- On issues related to natural calamities
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