FEATURES OF PIL‌

The various features of the PIL are explained below:

1. PIL is a strategic arm of the legal aid movement and is intended to bring justice within the reach of the poor masses, who constitute the low visibility area of humanity.

2. PIL is a totally different kind of litigation from the ordinary traditional litigation which is essentially of an adversary character where there is a dispute between two litigating parties, one making claims seeking relief against the other and that other opposing such claim or resisting such relief.

3. PIL is brought before the Court not for the purpose of enforcing the right of one individual against another as happens in the case of ordinary litigation, but it is intended to promote and vindicate public interest.

4. PIL demands that violations of constitutional and legal rights of large numbers of people who are poor, ignorant or in a socially or economically disadvantaged position should not go unnoticed and unredressed.

5. PIL is essentially a co-operative effort on the part of the petitioner, the State or Public Authority, and the Court to secure observance of the constitutional or legal rights, benefits and privileges conferred upon the vulnerable sections of the community and to reach social justice to them.

6. In PIL, litigation is undertaken for the purpose of redressing public injury, enforcing public duty, protecting social, collective, diffused rights and interests or vindicating public interest.

7. In PIL, the role held by the Court is more assertive than in traditional actions; it is creative rather than passive and it assumes a more positive attitude in determining acts.

8. Though in PIL court enjoys a degree of flexibility unknown to the trial of traditional private law litigations, whatever the procedure adopted by the court it must be procedure known to judicial tenets and characteristics of a judicial proceeding.

9. In a PIL, unlike traditional dispute resolution mechanism, there is no determination on adjudication of individual rights.