Waiting for Jabalpur moment
FRONTLINE|June 5, 2020
The Supreme Court’s role in ensuring executive accountability during the ongoing lockdown leaves much to be desired. Standing in shining contrast is the record of some High Courts.
V. VENKATESAN
Waiting for Jabalpur moment

DURING A VIRTUAL MEETING WITH TOP LAW officers on May 10, Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad emphasised the need to avoid “overzealous public interest litigations” in these “challenging times”. Underlying his statement is the assumption that public interest litigation (PIL) petitions, by their very nature, betray a lack of trust in the government, which is indefensible when it is fighting a pandemic.

While lack of trust in the government may have initially led a petitioner to approach the court seeking effective remedy on behalf of those who cannot approach it for various reasons, in all such cases the government is the respondent. This is a fact that makes it clear that the petitioner trusts the government. Recent PIL cases being heard by the Supreme Court in the wake of the prolonged lockdown underline the non-adversarial nature of the litigants’ prayers. Rather than accepting the responsibility to respond to such prayers, the Centre chose to avoid them. The Supreme Court, in the case of migrants, added insult to injury by interpreting their rights-related grievance as a result of contributory negligence on their part.

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