SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 12 September 2024, Shift 3 · General Awareness · Question 5 of 100

Text as printed on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; answer per SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 6 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. The questions and options here are reproduced as printed on a candidate's own response sheet for this shift — the Commission's text, unchanged. Each answer is SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet; SSC allowed challenges to it and never publishes a final key. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

The concept of Public Interest Litigation originated in _______________.

(a)Switzerland
(b)Iceland
(c)USA
(d)New Zealand

Answer

Why

Correct — C. Public Interest Litigation began in the USA, where the legal aid and civil rights movements of the 1960s produced suits brought on behalf of groups too poor or too scattered to sue for themselves — prisoners, consumers, the very poor, racial minorities.

India borrowed the device in the late 1970s. Justices P.N. Bhagwati and V.R. Krishna Iyer relaxed the rule of locus standi so that any public-spirited person could move the court under Articles 32 and 226 for somebody else's rights.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Switzerland — Switzerland enters Indian polity for direct democracy, the referendum and the initiative, and not for any litigation device.
(b)
Iceland — Iceland is remembered for the Althing, among the oldest surviving parliaments, and has no part in the origin of PIL.
(d)
New Zealand — New Zealand contributes the Ombudsman to Indian public administration, being the first Commonwealth country to appoint one — a grievance office, not a court device.

Concept

PIL loosens the oldest rule of procedure: that only the person whose right is injured may sue. Once locus standi is relaxed, a letter, a newspaper report or a stranger's petition can start a case for people who will never reach a court themselves.

The Indian court then went further than the American original. It began treating letters and postcards as writ petitions, which is called epistolary jurisdiction. The remedy is constitutional — Article 32 in the Supreme Court, Article 226 in a High Court.

Do not confuse where PIL came from with where it grew. The concept is American; the expansive Indian form, from Hussainara Khatoon (1979) onward, is what the polity syllabus then spends its time on.

Key facts

Public Interest Litigation originated in the United States, out of the legal aid and civil rights movements of the 1960s.
In India it was developed from the late 1970s by Justices P.N. Bhagwati and V.R. Krishna Iyer.
A PIL is filed under Article 32 in the Supreme Court or Article 226 in a High Court.
Hussainara Khatoon v. State of Bihar (1979), on undertrial prisoners, is treated as India's first PIL.

Study next

Locus standi and exactly how PIL relaxes itThe five writs under Articles 32 and 226 and what each one commandsJudicial activism and the criticism of judicial overreach

Common traps

Answering the United Kingdom because Indian court procedure is English in origin
Assuming Article 226 is narrower than Article 32, when its writ power is in fact wider
Confusing a PIL with an ordinary writ petition filed by the injured person himself

The writ articles are asked on their own too — 9 Sep 2024, 09:00, GA Q6 asks which article carries writ jurisdiction similar to Article 32, and the keyed answer is Article 226.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.