The Chhattisgarh High Court dismissed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed seeking direction to the respondents to protect people of one community for performing their religious duties.
The Counsel for the petitioner submitted that some fundamentalist organizations are attacking a particular society (Muslim community) and this attack is a kind of mob lynching and the petitioner Committee had made several complaints before various authorities for taking action against guilty persons that were part of mob lynching, but no action has been taken against those who disturb the peace and order.
The Division Bench of Chief Justice Ramesh Sinha and Justice Ravindra Kumar Agrawal held that the Courts should, prima facie, verify the credentials of the petitioner before entertaining a PIL. It is also well settled that the Courts before entertaining the PIL should ensure that the PIL is aimed at redressal of genuine public harm or public injury. The Court should also ensure that there is no personal gain, private motive or oblique motive behind filing the public interest litigation.
“The Courts should ensure the jurisdiction in public interest is invoked for genuine purposes by persons who have bona fide credentials and who do not seek to espouse or pursue any extraneous object. Otherwise, the jurisdiction in public interest can become a source of misuse by private persons seeking to pursue their own vested interests”.
Considering the prayers and pleadings made in the writ petition which is styled as Public Interest Litigation, the Court was not satisfied that this is a genuine petition filed in public interest so as to invoke the jurisdiction in the public interest under Article 226 of the Constitution. No specific date or time of any incident has been mentioned and further the present petition is a sketchy one and appears to be filed for personal gain and publicity.