Q85
Indian PolityJudiciary & Landmark Judgments
Public Interest Litigation is primarily associated with which concept?
- a.Judicial Review
- b.Judicial Activism
- c.Federalism
- d.NITI Aayog
Answer: (B) Judicial Activism
Public Interest Litigation (PIL) is the best-known product of judicial activism in India. In the late 1970s and 1980s Justices P.N. Bhagwati and V.R. Krishna Iyer relaxed the rule of locus standi so that any public-spirited person, even by a letter, could move the Supreme Court (Article 32) or a High Court (Article 226) on behalf of those unable to do so. Landmark cases: Hussainara Khatoon v. State of Bihar (1979, undertrial prisoners), often called the first PIL, and S.P. Gupta v. Union of India (1981). Judicial review (A) is the older and wider power of courts to test the constitutionality of laws and executive acts; PIL is a procedure that widened access to it. Federalism and NITI Aayog are unrelated.