PIL noble tool, must not be abused: SC

The Supreme Court on Tuesday said the PIL is a very "powerful, noble, ingenious and constructive tool" devised by it to address the problems faced by the public, and it must not be abused at any cost.

A bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul expressed its displeasure on a plea made by advocate Prashant Bhushan on behalf of NGO 'CPIL' to seek a probe by a special investigation team into the politician-bureaucrats-corporate nexus to influence policy-making in the country.

“Do you know how many death references are pending before us? There are 65 death references. Those people still await our judgement. They do not know about their fate. There are over 2,000 appeals from people who have already spent half of their sentence,” the bench said.

“We have to have our priorities right,” the CJI said.

Bhushan filed his PIL relying on leaks from emails from a former Essar company employee purportedly showing the use of efforts to influence public policy between 2009 and 2013.

In its affidavit, the Essar Group had earlier claimed that it has not done anything "illegal or improper" in accepting job requests from people in public offices. It sought rejection of the PIL.

On Tuesday, the court, however, granted six weeks to Bhushan to file better particulars of the allegations that have been made in the PIL to seek the reliefs.