The PIL puzzle

Nitish Kumar has been a leader who believes that actions should speak for themselves. Without uttering a word on the controversy about the sedition case against 49 public personalities in a Muzaffarpur police station, the Bihar chief minister got it resolved. He let the police at different levels—an additional director general of police, a superintendent and even a station house officer—speak about the annulment of the charges against personalities from across the cultural spectrum including Aparna Sen, Shyam Benegal and Adoor Gopalakrishnan. The celebrities had written a strong letter to the prime minister protesting the lynchings, saying there can be no democracy without dissent, and that Jai Shri Ram should not become a slogan of bloodthirsty aggression.

The Bihar government also booked serial litigant Sudhir Kumar Ojha, who has filed over 700 public interest petitions in Bihar courts against celebrities. The police accused him of filing a false case to cause mischief. Based on Ojha’s petition, the chief judicial magistrate of Muzaffarpur had asked the police to proceed against the 49 personalities on the complaint of tarnishing the image of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the country. There were a lot of protests, and the BJP, through Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi, had distanced itself from the complaint.

Illustration: Bhaskaran Illustration: Bhaskaran

Sushil Kumar himself has been a target of Ojha’s complaints, along with many others including prime minister Manmohan Singh and Amitabh Bachchan. Even as the controversy died down, Nitish did not add to the verbal pollution, and just instructed the police to be tough.

The tendency of filing serial PILs is not restricted to Muzaffarpur. The Supreme Court and the High Courts have to deal with lawyers whose fingers are fast in filing petitions based on major headlines in media. More than a quarter of PILs in the country are filed by lawyers, according to a rough estimate.

There are serious lawyer-litigants who pursue a single cause with spirited doggedness, demanding and even achieving both legal and systemic changes. One such petitioner was Delhi lawyer M.C. Mehta, who fought to end the use of diesel by commercial vehicles in Delhi to reduce pollution. The Committee for Judicial Accountability has been filing petitions in the Supreme Court seeking to ensure fairness in functioning of higher judiciary, though its aggressive methods are not liked by everyone in the legal network.

Then there are lawyers who are compulsive litigants, running to be part of big issues. These lawyers, some of whom have less work and more time, need the oxygen of publicity. Under the rules of the bar council, no lawyer can advertise. Only word of mouth in client circles or mention in judgments give them exposure. But they argue that the big names in the profession have an advantage as their arguments before the top courts are given publicity by the media.

But, it is not about just publicity. There are also petitions filed to target companies, organisations and individuals so that the targets negotiate with the petitioner to dilute or drop the case. Some chief justices are rough with such litigants.

Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and one of his recent predecessors, justice S.H. Kapadia, are known for their impatience with PILs filed for frivolous or vexatious reasons. Gogoi is a stickler for locus standi, and questions whether the PIL petitioner has any firm ground to file the case. Gogoi and Kapadia have imposed penalties on lawyers for wasting the time of the courts. But there are many others who slip through the systems and get heard in open court. These serial litigants know that not every judge or magistrate is made of the same temper. And every target does not have a Nitish Kumar to intervene.

sachi@theweek.in