ICG Lecture on 

“The Politics of Public Interest Litigation in Post-Emergency India”

by Anuj Bhuwania
South Asian University, New Delhi

Friday | 20th January 2017 | 4.00 pm – 5.30 pm

Organised by The International Centre Goa

Entry Free & Open to public

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Anuj Bhuwania teaches at South Asian University, New Delhi. He studied law in National Law School of India University, Bangalore and School of Oriental and African Studies, London before doing his PhD in Anthropology at Columbia University in New York. He has held visiting positions at the Centre for Modern Indian Studies, University of Goettingen, the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), New Delhi and the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance (CSLG) in Jawaharlal Nehru University. Courting the People: Public Interest Litigation in Post-Emergency India, published in December 2016 by Cambridge University Press, is his first book.
Synopsis
The Indian higher judiciary has acquired an increasingly important role in India’s public discourse in the last few decades. The Supreme Court and the state High Courts have emerged as enormously powerful judicial institutions in the aftermath of the Internal Emergency of 1975-77. The principal means through which these judicial powers have been mobilized and enacted is the jurisdiction of Public Interest Litigation (PIL). This lecture will talk about the political role that PIL has come to play in contemporary India. It revisits the circumstances and manoeuvres that led to the rise of PIL and traces its political journey since then, arguing that the enormous powers that PIL confers upon the appellate judiciary stems from its populist character.