Forty-five Years of Public Interest Litigations in India: Changing Constituencies and the Rise of the Regulatory Court

Document Type

Research Article

Abstract

The article presents an empirically informed account of public interest litigation (PIL) before the Supreme Court of India over the forty-five years since its inception. It surveys nearly 750 reported PIL judgments and orders to provide an overview of the Court’s PIL docket and its changing constituencies. Through hand-coding of the dataset, the article identifies the categories of petitioners who access the Court through PILs and analyzes how these constituencies shape the nature and function of PILs. The article finds that the Indian PIL experience is characterized by the diminishing presence of poor and disadvantaged petitioners, who have been relegated to the margins of the docket. They have been displaced by a growing number of regulatory matters that have transformed the Court into a super-regulator, as well as by petitioners litigating private disputes through PILs. The rise of PILs has enabled the Supreme Court of India to emerge as a powerful regulatory actor, whose jurisdiction is increasingly invoked to serve private interests. This development stands in contrast to the originating logic of the PIL movement, which was to enable poor and disadvantaged groups to access courts and vindicate constitutional rights.

DOI

10.1093/icon/moag058

Publication Date

5-28-2026

Journal

International Journal of Constitutional Law

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