Public Interest Litigation as Environmental Policy Making: A Case Study of Banning Diesel Fuel for Public Transports in Delhi, India

The division of power among Executive, Legislature and Judiciary have been clearly laid down in the constitution of India for discharging constitutional responsibilities. In spite of this division of power the policy making and its enforcement are very frequently done in India through court intervention which otherwise it falls under the jurisdiction of executive organ. This kind of phenomenon has been witnessed in most of the time particularly on environmental issues because of the failure on the part of the government in discharging constitutional responsibilities such as protecting the fundamental rights of the citizen enshrined in part III of the constitution of India. Thus the aggrieved public pulled up the government inaction through filing a series of public interest litigation in the court. One such example was Delhi vehicular pollution case in which the Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) could be successfully introduced for all commercial transport of Delhi because of the conscious intervention made by judiciary, civil society and media which otherwise the government could not have been possible. In this study, therefore the paper has attempted to investigate to what extent the environmental policy making has been determined by the PIL with special reference to the Delhi vehicular pollution case.The paper also examined the role of various stakeholders during the process of policy implementation. Despite resounding success of PIL the same has been criticized for overreaching of judicial activism.The paper concludes with note that environmental policy making required an integrated approach to resolve the vexed issues of institutional problems.