The Supreme Court Heard a 1979 Petition for Bihar's Forgotten Prisoners That Rested on Two Newspaper Issues, and Public Interest Litigation Still Lets a Letter to the Chief Justice Start a Case

On 12 February 1979 the Supreme Court of India ordered the release of undertrial prisoners in Bihar on a petition that rested on two newspaper issues. Writ Petition No. 57 of 1979 incorporated the Indian Express of 8 and 9 January 1979, and the Court said the petition disclosed “a shocking state of affairs”. The Supreme Court’s own account says a writ petition may be moved by an aggrieved individual or, where the interest of the public at large is involved, by a public-spirited person or group, and that the Court has treated letters, telegrams, postcards and news reports as writ petitions. That is public interest litigation, usually shortened to PIL.

The petition that rested on newspaper cuttings

The petition was a plea for a writ of habeas corpus, a court order to produce a detained person and justify the detention. The named petitioners were prisoners held in Bihar’s jails, and Mrs K. Hingorani appeared for them. Notice went to Bihar, and when the hearing came on 5 February 1979 no one appeared for the State. The bench proceeded on the footing that the allegations in the cuttings were correct. Some of the prisoners named in them, it recorded, had been in jail for 5, 7 or 9 years, and a few for more than 10, without their trial having begun.

The order of 12 February 1979 read speedy trial into Article 21, the right to life and personal liberty, because a procedure that keeps people behind bars for years without trial cannot be “reasonable, fair or just”. Bail also came under criticism, because the system demands money bonds and sureties from people too poor to find them. The Court directed the release of the undertrials on personal bonds.

Two more orders followed in the same writ petition. On 26 February 1979 the Court held that keeping women and children in jail as “protective custody” had no basis in law and ordered them moved to welfare homes. On 9 March 1979 it found that some prisoners had been held longer than the maximum sentence for their offence and directed their release as a violation of Article 21. That order also held free legal aid part of a fair procedure, the point covered in our piece on how a case reaches the Supreme Court.

Who may ask a court to act for someone else

The route into the Supreme Court is Article 32, which has been in force since 26 January 1950 under Article 394. Clause (1) guarantees “the right to move the Supreme Court by appropriate proceedings” for the rights in Part III, and clause (2) gives the Court power to issue directions, orders or writs. Article 226 gives every High Court a similar power to issue writs to any person or authority, including a Government, “for the enforcement of any of the rights conferred by Part III and for any other purpose”. Part III’s rights are set out in our guide to fundamental rights.

Neither article says who must file a petition. A seven-judge bench decided S. P. Gupta v. Union of India, reported as AIR 1982 SC 149, in December 1981, and Bhagwati J set out the modern rule. Where a person or a determinate class of persons suffers a legal wrong and cannot approach the Court because of poverty, helplessness, disability or a disadvantaged position, “any member of the public can maintain an application for an appropriate direction, order or writ”. Later judgments, including the 2010 ruling quoted below, record the same passage. Acting on letters is often called epistolary jurisdiction, from the old word for a letter.

The clearest test of the rule came in Bandhua Mukti Morcha v. Union of India. An organisation working for the release of bonded labourers wrote to a judge on 25 February 1982 about stone quarries in Faridabad district, naming labourers and attaching statements bearing their thumb marks or signatures. By an order of 26 February 1982 the Court treated the letter as a writ petition, issued notice and appointed two advocates as commissioners to visit the quarries on 27 and 28 February and report by 2 March.

The judgment of 16 December 1983 held that a member of the public acting in good faith may move it “even by just writing a letter”, because it would not be fair to expect someone acting for the public good to pay for a lawyer and a formal petition. It added that the adversarial procedure, in which two sides lead evidence and a judge acts as umpire, is not required in an Article 32 proceeding. Public interest litigation, the Court said, is “a challenge and an opportunity to the government and its officers” to make basic human rights meaningful for the poor.

How a letter reaches a judge today

The Supreme Court’s jurisdiction page says the Court can be moved either by a writ petition or by “addressing a letter to the Hon’ble the Chief Justice of India”. Sen J added in Bandhua Mukti Morcha that such a letter should go to the Chief Justice and his companion Justices and not to one judge by name, because a private communication to an individual judge could embarrass the Court.

The 2010 judgment quoted below lists the range of cases that began this way. Prem Shankar Shukla v. Delhi Administration (1980) began with a prisoner’s telegram to a judge, complaining of being handcuffed, and led to directions. In Sheela Barse v. State of Maharashtra (1983) a journalist’s letter on custodial violence against women prisoners in Bombay was treated as a writ petition. The Court also heard, in 1983, a letter from two Delhi University law professors about conditions in the Agra Protective Home for Women and issued directions that improved them.

A letter now passes through a screen. The Court’s compilation of guidelines, drawn from a full Court decision of 1 December 1988 and later modifications, begins by excluding any petition about an individual or personal matter. The categories it will ordinarily take up are:

• bonded labour and neglected children;
• non-payment of minimum wages, exploitation of casual workers and breaches of labour law, except in individual cases;
• petitions from jails on harassment, death in jail, release on personal bond and speedy trial;
• petitions against the police for refusing to register a case, for harassment and for death in custody;
• atrocities on women, including bride-burning, rape and kidnapping;
• harassment of villagers belonging to the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and economically backward classes;
• environmental pollution, ecological balance, drugs, food adulteration, heritage, forests and wildlife;
• riot victims and family pension.

Letters that reach the Court’s PIL Cell are screened there first. Only those inside the categories are placed before a Judge nominated by the Chief Justice. Landlord and tenant disputes, service and pension matters, admission to medical and other colleges, and requests for early hearing of High Court cases are not taken up. The guidelines also say it may be worth asking for an affidavit “whenever it is not too onerous”.

The Handbook on Practice and Procedure, updated on 6 October 2025, adds two rules. A letter outside the categories can still be registered as a writ petition if the nominated Judge so directs. A formal PIL is filed in Form No. 33 and must disclose the petitioner’s identity and occupation, the injury to the public, any personal interest and any other litigation with a link to the issue. An affidavit must say that the petitioner has no personal gain, private motive or oblique reason, and the petition is registered as Writ Petition (PIL).

What the Court has ordered through PIL

In Vishaka v. State of Rajasthan, decided on 13 August 1997, certain social activists and NGOs brought a class action after the alleged gang rape of a social worker in a Rajasthan village. The bench led by the Chief Justice found no adequate law on sexual harassment at work, laid down guidelines under Article 32 and said they were the law declared under Article 141. They defined sexual harassment, required a complaints committee headed by a woman with at least half women members and a third party such as an NGO, and bound all workplaces until Parliament legislated. Parliament did so in an Act that received assent on 22 April 2013 and came into force on 9 December 2013. It requires an Internal Complaints Committee with a senior woman as presiding officer and a member from a women’s organisation or a person familiar with the issues, and a district Local Committee for workplaces with fewer than ten workers or where the complaint is against the employer.

Olga Tellis v. Bombay Municipal Corporation reached a five-judge bench in 1985 through Article 32 petitions from pavement and slum dwellers of Bombay, joined by the People’s Union for Civil Liberties and two journalists. On 10 July 1985 the Court held that the right to livelihood is part of the right to life under Article 21. It also held that the Commissioner was justified in removing encroachments after the hearing the Court itself had given, and it ordered that slums not be removed before 31 October 1985 and that dwellers counted in the 1976 census be offered alternative sites or pitches.

M. C. Mehta v. Union of India produced two lines of orders on rivers and air. On 12 January 1988 the Court entertained as a PIL a petition against the Kanpur municipal body over pollution of the Ganga, noting that the petitioner owned no riparian land and holding that it was not reasonable to expect any one person to sue over a public nuisance of that range. The reported order records that Kanpur was discharging 274.50 million litres a day of sewage into the river. What has changed since is in our report on the Ganga clean-up. In the Delhi vehicle pollution case, Writ Petition (Civil) No. 13029 of 1985, the Court’s direction of 28 July 1998 required the whole city bus fleet to run on CNG by 31 March 2001. The measured air-quality record is in our piece on Delhi’s air.

Where the Court draws the line

The first warning came from inside the bench that decided Bandhua Mukti Morcha. Pathak J agreed with the directions but wrote of “grave danger inherent in a practice where a mere letter is entertained as a petition” from someone whose standing is unknown, since a petition on affidavit shows the author checked the facts.

The 2001 CNG order shows the objection from the other side. Stage carriage bus operators argued that they had not been parties to the writ petition when the 1998 timetable was fixed. The Court answered that its directions were not made in adversarial litigation, that the order bound everyone in Delhi, and that health under Article 21 overrode the Motor Vehicles Act where the two conflicted. On 26 March 2001 it refused a blanket extension of the 31 March deadline and allowed limited relief to schools and the Delhi Transport Corporation until 30 September 2001.

The Court has also policed its own jurisdiction. Neetu v. State of Punjab (2007) said a PIL must not encroach on the sphere the Constitution reserves to the executive and the legislature. Sanjeev Bhatnagar v. Union of India (2005) described a petition as “publicity interest litigation” and imposed costs of Rs 10,000, both cases as recounted in the 2010 judgment.

That judgment, State of Uttaranchal v. Balwant Singh Chaufal, was decided on 18 January 2010. It quashed a High Court writ petition about the age limit for an Advocate General, imposed costs of Rs 1 lakh and said the Court was “not discouraging the public interest litigation in any manner”. It issued eight directions. Courts must encourage genuine PILs and curb those filed for other reasons. Each High Court should frame PIL rules within three months and send a copy to the Court’s Secretary General. Before entertaining a petition a court should verify the petitioner’s credentials, be satisfied that its contents are correct and that substantial public interest is involved, and make sure the aim is to redress genuine public harm with no personal gain or oblique motive behind it. Petitions of larger public interest, gravity and urgency get priority, and busybodies with ulterior motives should face exemplary costs.