Q.In what way can public interest litigation help the poor?

The poor usually cannot approach a court on their own — PIL removes that barrier by letting others file on their behalf. …

Ordinarily, only a personally aggrieved individual could go to court, which effectively shut out anyone too poor, too powerless, or too unaware of legal procedure to file a case themselves. PIL removed that barrier: from around 1979 onward, the Supreme Court began accepting petitions filed by others on behalf of people who could not easily approach the court on their own.

Two early cases show exactly how this worked for the poor specifically. In Hussainara Khatoon vs Bihar (1979), a newspaper report — not a petition from the prisoners themselves — exposed that many undertrial prisoners in Bihar had already spent longer in jail awaiting trial than they would have served if convicted; an advocate's petition, prompted by that report, brought the issue before the Supreme Court. In Sunil Batra vs Delhi Administration (1980), a Tihar jail inmate's smuggled, scribbled note describing torture reached Justice Krishna Iyer, who had it converted into a formal petition — again, not something the inmate could have managed through the ordinary legal process on his own. …