The people Union''s of Civil Liberty, Uttarakhand Chapter vs High Court of Uttarakhand

Barin Ghosh, C.J.—By a notification dated 26.05.2010, this High Court, in exercise of powers under Article 225 of the Constitution of India, while amending existing Rules of this High Court, added Chapter XXI(A) thereto and thereby provided Rules pertaining to writs in the nature of Public Interest Litigation under Article 226 of the Constitution of India. In the present writ petition, it is being contended that the manner in which the Rules have been framed, the same would, instead of encouraging public spirited persons to approach this Court, demoralize them to highlight public grievances of the people of the State. It has been contended that by asking the person approaching the Court to have sufficient material in support of the litigation, would be asking too much and in fact, would be demoralizing the person to highlight a genuine grievance of the people of the State. A look at the Rules would make it amply clear that these are administrative Rules and, accordingly, they do not contain any provision that in view of breach thereof at the threshold in the Registry itself, the petition will stand dismissed. We assure the Petitioner that each such writ petition, shown to have been made in public interest, would be listed after filing before the Division Bench No. 1, normally comprising of the Hon''ble Chief Justice of the High Court and his learned brother, except when the Hon''ble Chief Justice is not available and, accordingly, two Hon''ble Judges will comprise of the said Bench. It would be that Bench who would find out whether the person, who has approached the Court by filing a writ petition in the nature of public interest, has discharged his obligations towards the matter which he seeks to canvas before the Court and in the process, has acquired reasonable materials. Only when it is found that the person has approached the Court straightaway, without making any effort to sort out the problem or to highlight the problem before the authorities competent to or oblige to redress the same, the Court may say that while approaching the Court, the person concerned did not make any effort to collect sufficient material to substantiate the claim put forward or the logical method and manner of sorting out the problem highlighted.

It was contended by the Petitioner that in certain cases, service matters as well as criminal matters, may become matters pertaining to public interest. We assure that in the event, any service matter or criminal matter takes importance of a public nature and the basic ingredients thereof are highlighted in the writ petition, the Division Bench, who would be hearing the writ petition for the first time at the threshold, would certainly understand the public interest involved therein and would thereafter pursue the matter further.

We make it clear that the clarifications, as given by us above, are not conclusive. It shall be open to the Division Bench dealing with the writ petitions to expand the clarifications as above. This disposes of the writ petition.