The Limitations of Public Interest Litigation as A Vehicle for Advancing Road Safety in India

Public Interest Litigation has emerged as the favorite tool of multiple road safety stakeholders in India—commuters, pedestrians, civil society organizations advocating traffic, and public interest lawyers, among others. This paper presents an analysis of the likely reception of such litigation by the contemporary higher judiciary in India. The paper does not present a history of the Public Interest Litigation process in India, nor does it argue here about the right or wrong of the PIL mechanism itself, or whether the PIL process has come unmoored from its original intent as conceived by the Supreme Court of India in the late 1970s. The argument presented here hinges on the distinction the courts appear to make between judicial function and executive/legislative function by discussing a series of connected cases that have come to the Supreme Court of India and to the various state High Courts. The paper concludes that although the Indian judiciary appears to have moved away from looking favorably upon road safety matters being litigated in the Supreme Court, public interest litigation as a strategy still has value as a tool in the state High Courts, particularly if the litigation is narrowly tailored to address specific aspects of road safety.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AL010 Transportation Law.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Agrawal, Girish
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 93rd Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC
  • Date: 2014-1-12 to 2014-1-16
• Date: 2014

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: References;
• Pagination: 13p
• Monograph Title: TRB 93rd Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Court decisions; Highway safety; Laws and legislation; Legal factors; Litigation; Public policy
• Geographic Terms: India
• Subject Areas: Highways; Law; Policy; Safety and Human Factors; I82: Accidents and Transport Infrastructure;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01518542
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 14-5662
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Mar 20 2014 1:39PM