Suppressing Earlier PILs Breaches Rule 385-F: Rajasthan High Court Dismisses Five PILs With Costs

In five writ petitions filed as public interest litigation, the petitioner sought directions to maintain statues of national figures across Rajasthan; to set up ₹8-a-plate Indira/Annapurna Rasoi canteens at all court campuses; to enforce dress codes and name plates for the respondents' staff; to stop liquor sales from 8 pm to 10 am, ban them on dry days and move towards total prohibition; and to make the media publish case citations and numbers when reporting judgments (para 1). Counsel for the respondents called him a compulsive litigant abusing the PIL forum (para 2) who had disclosed none of five earlier PILs, as Rule 385-F requires (paras 7-8).

The petitioner asked the Court to show tolerance on the disclosure requirement and to view his repeated PILs sympathetically as genuine public-interest efforts (para 11). The Bench declined, citing the Supreme Court's PIL law and the admitted breach of Rule 385-F (para 11). That Rule requires a PIL to disclose, among other things, the petitioner's antecedents, finances, personal interest and other litigation (para 6). The Court found that the petitioner appeared to be a compulsive litigant who had repeatedly projected his grievances as PILs even when they did not deserve that status, a casual and adventuristic approach inconsistent with the law governing PILs (para 12). Even if some issues merited attention, not every grievance must come to the Court as a PIL (para 12). His five earlier PILs had been dismissed by coordinate benches, at least one expressly deprecating his conduct, and concealing them struck at the root of his bona fides (para 12). The litigation was a ‘Publicity Interest Litigation’, and such adventurism with suppression of material facts could not be countenanced in writ jurisdiction (para 13). Following Ashok Kumar Pandey and the caution in Dr. B. Singh, the Bench imposed nominal costs, refraining from exemplary costs (paras 13-14).