Public interest litigation (PIL) is a legal innovation of fairly recent vintage which was inspired by noble objectives. It has been seen as a useful tool in widening access to justice, especially in societies scarred by poverty, illiteracy, human exploitation, corruption and maladministration.

The concept took deep roots in India some thirty years ago and has now become an ubiquitous feature of the legal landscape. Over the years, however, Indian PIL has, in Dr Venkat Iyer's view, produced a plethora of serious negative consequences, most of them unintended (but not unforeseeable), which have the potential not only to discredit the concept itself, but to irreversibly destroy the trust that the Indian masses have placed in the judiciary – an institution which has, over the past five decades, been come to be seen, rightly or wrongly, as the last bastion of freedom and the rule of law.

The lecture is aimed at shining a critical spotlight on the state of PIL in contemporary India and to suggest that the time has come for a serious reappraisal of attitudes in this important area of law and public policy.

In this episode of BIC Talks, Venkat Iyer will be in conversation with C N Kumar. This is an excerpt from a conversation that took place in the BIC premises in Aug 2025.

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