Justice A.S. Oka: the judge known for taking suffering seriously

Justice Abhay Shreeniwas Oka's tenure as the Chief Justice at the Karnataka High Court shines bright as an example of judicial activism within the four corners of the law, imbued with a constitutional philosophy, write MOHAMMED AFEEF and BASAWA PRASAD KUNALE, as he gets set to serve at the Supreme Court.

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IT has been 36 years since the legal scholar Prof. (Dr.) Upendra Baxi wrote his seminal article "Taking Suffering Seriously: Social Action Litigation in the Supreme Court of India", in which he extolled the virtues of social action litigation/ public interest litigation (PIL). In his words, the Supreme Court had, at the time, become the "last resort for the oppressed and bewildered".

In recent years, a critique of the PIL by various legal scholars and commentators, looking at the period subsequent to 1990 has emerged. The focus, which initially was on the most vulnerable, has shifted to concerns of the "general public" or the "middle-class", such as corruption, traffic management, environment related concerns, disposal of hazardous waste. On several occasions, the poor were understood to be the enemy of public interest, which explained, for instance, the scores of slum evictions resulting from orders passed in PILs, since the early 1990's.