The most important procedural innovation for environmental jurisprudence has been the relaxation of traditional process of standing in the Court and introducing the concept of Public Interest Litigation (PIL).11 Until the early 1970s, litigation in India was in its rudimentary form because it was seen as a pursuit for the vindication of private vested interests.During this time period, initiation and continuance of litigation was prerogative only to the individual aggrieved party. A complete change in the scenario in the 1980s with efforts taken by Justice P.N. Bhagwati and Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer was marke by attempts to bring wider issues affecting the general public at large within the ambit. The ambit and extent of PIL were expanded in 1980s from the initial prisoner rights concerns, to others like bonded labour, child labour, inmates of various asylums, ensuring the rights of the poor to education, to shelter and other essential amenities, sexual harassment of women at working place, preventing corruption in public offices, accountability of public servants, and utilisation of public funds for development activities.

The Court’s approach to entertain PIL for environmental protection, however, is significant in many ways. First, prior to the emergence of the concept PIL, Criminal Law provisions as contained in the Indian Penal Code, Civil Law remedies under the law of Torts and provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code were existed to provide remedies for public nuisance cases including air, water and noise pollution. However, due to lack of people’s awareness about the environmental problems and limited knowledge of environmental laws there were problems in drawing the attention of the Court towards environmental problems. Again, there was no provision in the environmental legal framework for allowing the third party to seek the help of the Court if the party was not directly affected by environmental problems.12  Hence, the biggest hurdle in the path of litigation for environmental justice had been the traditional concept of  locus standi. Earlier when the third party approached the appellate Court for seeking relief against an injury they did not incur directly, the action was not maintainable as the appellate Court focused its attention on the identity of the petitioner rather than the subject of petition.

But now the Court’s approach has changed and it has been ruled that any member of the public having sufficient interest, may be allowed to initiate the legal process in order to assert diffused and meta-individual rights. Generally, in environmental litigation, the parties affected by pollution are a large, diffused and unidentified mass of people. Therefore, the question arises as to who ought to bring such cases to the Court’s notice where no personal injury, in particular, has been noticed.

In such situations, the Court has emphasised that any member of the public having sufficient interest may be allowed to initiate the legal process in order to assert diffused and meta-individual rights in environmental problems.