Blitz Bureau
THE Supreme Court has bemoaned the misuse of public interest litigation (PIL) to get relief denied in other fora and jurisdictions.
A Bench of Justices Surya Kant and KV Viswanathan said that such misuse was eating into the time that high courts could otherwise use to dispose of long-pending appeals.
“The problem is that this PIL jurisdiction is being mischievously invoked in various high courts now to settle personal scores. Somebody goes in PIL when you cannot succeed in civil courts or anywhere and gets orders.
And whole day instead of deciding criminal appeals pending or civil appeals which are pending for decades, they are issuing absurd directions in PILs,” Justice Kant remarked, according to Bar and Bench. The Bench made the oral remark while taking a dim view of demolitions carried out against certain properties in the Patna Sadar area. The demolition followed a March 18 Patna High Court order on a PIL seeking the demolition of certain allegedly unauthorised constructions.
Notably, the demolition was carried out on March 23-24, despite the Supreme Court’s March 22 decision to order status quo until the High Court disposes of the matter, which consisted of a batch of petitions. Effectively, the top court had stayed the demolitions on March 22.
However, the State went ahead with the demolitions by citing the March 18 High Court order and filed a compliance report before the high court. “We strongly deprecate the conduct of the authorities and the lame excuse given before us. If the appeals had already been decided, it was incumbent upon them to move an appropriate application for vacation or modification of orders. A District Magistrate had no business to sit over an order of this court and resume the exercise despite a stay order,” the court said.
