Bombay High Court dismisses ‘frivolous’ PIL

Taking a no-nonsense approach towards public interest litigations (PILs) filed with personal interest, the Bombay high court not only dismissed one such plea on Sunday, but also imposed a fine on the petitioner.

This is the second such dismissal in recent times by a division bench headed by Justice V.M. Kanade. In the earlier case, the court had asked the petitioner to deposit Rs 50,000 as a security amount with the high court registry, following which the court would hear his petition.

In the current instance, the bench observed that people should not rush to courts to file cases under the garb of “public interest”. The court then imposed a fine of Rs 25,000 on Ujwala Patil for filing a “frivolous” PIL that espouses private interests.

The petitioner, who is the president of the Mumbai division of Maharashtra Machhimar Kruti Samiti, had challenged a Slum Rehabilitation Authority scheme. She alleged that it was approved without the mandatory consent of 70 per cent of the slum dwellers.

On the other hand, during the hearing, senior counsel Praveen Samdani, appearing for the developer of the project, told the court that the construction work was at its fag end and some of the slum dwellers had already been allotted homes in the building.

The bench, on an earlier date of hearing, had noted, “We are of the view that prima facie there is no public interest involved in this PIL and it has not been filed with a bona fide intention. Obviously, the current PIL has been filed by the persons who are disgruntled and could not succeed in the earlier round of litigations filed by them. It appears that after the extension till May 31, 2016 that was granted to vacate the premises was over, the present PIL has been filed.”

The bench added: “The time has come to weed out petitions which, though titled as public interest litigations, are in essence something else.”