The Role of Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in Shaping Public Policy in India

This systematic review paper examines the role of the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in framing the Indian public policy using the literature published from 2013-2019. The paper investigates the impacts of judicial interventions through PIL on the process of reforming major sectors, namely those on health, education and the environment. It also examines the changing role of the judiciary in creating social justice and accountability to the government. The research follows the philosophy of interpretivist, an inductive method, and descriptive design, and themes and axial coding will be used as the design of qualitative data analysis. The results indicate that PIL has played an important role in policy setting and the achievement of social justice on the one hand, and entails the threat of judicial activism, elitism and flaws in translations to be carried out, on the other hand. Future research and policy recommendations are included as well.