Explain the reasons for the growth of public interest litigation in India. As a result of it, has the Indian Supreme Court…

Public interest litigation (PIL) grew in India because ordinary citizens, especially the poor, lacked practical access to courts despite constitutional guarantees. After the Emergency, the Supreme Court, in S.P. Gupta (1981) and later PIL jurisprudence, relaxed strict locus standi, allowing any public-spirited person to invoke Article 32. This judicial innovation responded to executive and legislative failure, and the absence of effective statutory remedies, to protect socio-economic and environmental rights: Article 21 was expanded to include clean environment, health, safety and livelihood, while Article 32 became a vehicle for continuing mandamus. Cases such as Bandhua Mukti Morcha and M.C. Mehta show how the Court filled gaps in labour and environmental governance. Social activism, expanding media and civil-society mobilisation further enabled marginalised groups to frame grievances as constitutional claims.

However, calling the Supreme Court the world’s most powerful judiciary in a federal democracy overstates its position. Compared with the US, where political question doctrine and federalism limit judicial intervention, or the UK, where parliamentary sovereignty constrains courts, the Indian Court is unusually activist. Yet its power is structural, not absolute: it depends on executive implementation, lacks independent enforcement machinery, and faces criticism for judicial overreach, dilution of PIL through frivolous petitions, and policy-making beyond its competence.

Thus PIL has made the Court a transformative guardian of rights, but it is best described as one of the most activist judiciaries, not the most powerful, because its authority remains bounded by institutional limits, separation of powers and implementation realities.