A plea would qualify to be a Public Interest Litigation only if it seeks relief in full public interest and is filed by a person having no personal motive, the Madras High Court has said.
Dismissing a PIL recently against the nomination of N Chinnadurai as the AIADMK's Rajya Sabha poll candidate by one M Ganesan, the first bench comprising Chief Justice R K Agrawal and Justice K Ravichandra Babu said, "not only the relief sought for in a PIL must have the element of public interest, but also the litigant who filed such PIL must be a person not having any personal motive or interest against the contesting respondent/s."
The judges made it clear that if an element of personal motive is found, then such litigation would lose the character of PIL, and it has to be construed only as a private litigation with ulterior motive.
Ganesan had alleged that Chinnadurai was involved in misappropriation of district panchayat funds during his tenure as Chairman of Tuticorin district panchayat. He wanted the court to direct the Vigilance authorities to register a case and take action against Chinnadurai.
Shortly after the PIL was filed, AIADMK replaced Chinnadurai with A K Selvaraj.
Chinnadurai was also expelled from the party for "anti-party activities and going against its principles."
Denying the allegations, Chinnadurai's counsel submitted that a similar PIL, filed before the Madurai bench of the High Court earlier, was dismissed after it was informed that the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption had already taken up the matter and the issue was pending before it.
Justice Agrawal and Justice K Ravichandra Babu pointed out that Ganesan had declared in his PIL that he had no personal interest though he himself admitted in the affidavit that he had filed a corruption complaint against Chinnadurai.
Citing this, besides the fact that a similar PIL had been dismissed by another bench of the court, the judges said the present one was not at all maintainable.
"We find that the petitioner is only trying to abuse the process of the court by filing one writ petition before the principal bench and other petition before the Madurai bench.
