NEW DELHI: The publicity hungry who rush to higher courts with public interest litigations based on newspaper headlines were put on warning on Friday after the Supreme Court refused to interfere with an Allahabad High Court order asking a persistent PIL litigant to deposit Rs 25,000 with every PIL she filed.
The incessant petitioning by Nutan Thkaur on purported public causes made Allahabad HC impose a novel condition - deposit Rs 25,000 with every fresh PIL she filed. If the court found the PIL to be advocating a genuine public cause, then the money would be returned to her. If not, the amount would be forfeited. She has so far filed a record 86 PILs in the HC.
Thakur's counsel Anoop Chaudhary argued that the condition imposed by the HC amounted to stifling the petitioner's important right to seek judicial redress of her grievances against the executive.
But a bench of Chief Justice R M Lodha and Justices Kurian Joseph and R F Nariman found nothing wrong in the condition imposed by the HC. It said, "There is nothing extraordinary about this order. All that it asks you to do is to deposit Rs 25,000. It does not curtail your right to file a bona fide PIL. It is only to ensure that you don't henceforth file frivolous petitions."
The bench was aware of the problem of frivolous litigation in the Supreme Court which has imposed cost on several PIL petitioners for rushing to the court with a PIL based on newspaper reports. If it found the PIL to be genuine yet lacking in data, it often asked petitioners to do more research and come back with statistics to back their claim.
The bench said there was a need for a law in every state to curtail vexatious and frivolous litigation. "In Maharashtra, there is a Vexatious Litigation (Prevention) Act of 1971 that needs to be enacted by every state," it said.
The bench said, "No one can rush to the court with a PIL for every headline in newspapers."
But Chaudhary argued that the court could always dismiss Thakur's petition and impose cost if it was found to be frivolous. "By this order, they will not entertain any petition by this petitioner unless supported by a demand draft of Rs 25,000," he said.
The bench said if her petition was genuine, she would always get her money back. The Law Commission had in 2005 recommended to the Centre to prevent frivolous litigation by enacting a law on the line of Madras Vexatious Litigation (Prevention) Act of 1949.
The commission was of the view that if a registrar general of an HC identified a litigant to be bombarding the court with petitions "habitually and without reasonable ground", then he could move a petition before the HC to declare him/her a vexatious litigant. Once that was done, he would be permitted to file a petition before the HC or a subordinate court only after prior approval from the head of that court.
The incessant petitioning by Nutan Thkaur on purported public causes made Allahabad HC impose a novel condition - deposit Rs 25,000 with every fresh PIL she filed. If the court found the PIL to be advocating a genuine public cause, then the money would be returned to her. If not, the amount would be forfeited. She has so far filed a record 86 PILs in the HC.
Thakur's counsel Anoop Chaudhary argued that the condition imposed by the HC amounted to stifling the petitioner's important right to seek judicial redress of her grievances against the executive.
But a bench of Chief Justice R M Lodha and Justices Kurian Joseph and R F Nariman found nothing wrong in the condition imposed by the HC. It said, "There is nothing extraordinary about this order. All that it asks you to do is to deposit Rs 25,000. It does not curtail your right to file a bona fide PIL. It is only to ensure that you don't henceforth file frivolous petitions."
The bench was aware of the problem of frivolous litigation in the Supreme Court which has imposed cost on several PIL petitioners for rushing to the court with a PIL based on newspaper reports. If it found the PIL to be genuine yet lacking in data, it often asked petitioners to do more research and come back with statistics to back their claim.
The bench said there was a need for a law in every state to curtail vexatious and frivolous litigation. "In Maharashtra, there is a Vexatious Litigation (Prevention) Act of 1971 that needs to be enacted by every state," it said.
The bench said, "No one can rush to the court with a PIL for every headline in newspapers."
But Chaudhary argued that the court could always dismiss Thakur's petition and impose cost if it was found to be frivolous. "By this order, they will not entertain any petition by this petitioner unless supported by a demand draft of Rs 25,000," he said.
The bench said if her petition was genuine, she would always get her money back. The Law Commission had in 2005 recommended to the Centre to prevent frivolous litigation by enacting a law on the line of Madras Vexatious Litigation (Prevention) Act of 1949.
The commission was of the view that if a registrar general of an HC identified a litigant to be bombarding the court with petitions "habitually and without reasonable ground", then he could move a petition before the HC to declare him/her a vexatious litigant. Once that was done, he would be permitted to file a petition before the HC or a subordinate court only after prior approval from the head of that court.
The bench said there was a need for a law in every state to curtail vexatious and frivolous litigation.
The High Court had suo motu taken cognizance of Satish Shetty murder in 2010 and directed the CBI to probe it, which was otherwise being investigated by the Pune Rural Police. It had again, on 8th August, allowed the CBI to open up the land scam case in which, Shetty had lodged an FIR. In fact, CBI itself had made this requisition to the High Court, stating that it (the land scam) might be linked to the Satish Shetty murder and hence needs to be re-investigated. The High Court on 8th August, directed the agency to go ahead with the re-opening of the case and submit its report within four weeks. However, instead, the CBI submitted a closure report at Wadgaon–Maval court on the basis that there is no evidence against the 13 accused. All this in a matter of just three days, that is between 8th and 11th August 2014!
