Administrative Law

Charanlal Sahu v. Union of India

AIR 1990 SC 1480; (1990) 1 SCC 613

Citation: AIR 1990 SC 1480; (1990) 1 SCC 613
Court: Supreme Court of India
Date: 22 December 1989
Bench: Sabyasachi Mukharji, CJ, K.N. Singh, S. Ranganathan, A.M. Ahmadi and K.N. Saikia, JJ.

Facts

After the Bhopal Gas Disaster, Parliament passed the Bhopal Gas Leak Disaster Act.
The Act gave the Union Government exclusive power to represent victims.
Victims challenged this, saying the Government itself may have been partly responsible.
They argued that the Government could not fairly represent them.

Whether the Union Government was disqualified by bias from representing the victims.

Rule against bias prevents interested decision-makers from acting.
But the doctrine of necessity allows action where no alternative practical authority exists.
In mass injury cases, the State may act as parens patriae to protect victims.
Mere possibility of criticism against Government does not automatically prove legal bias.

The Court accepted that the disaster involved extraordinary circumstances.
Thousands of victims needed coordinated legal representation.
Individual litigation would be slow, expensive and unequal.
The Government was in the best practical position to represent them internationally and domestically.
The possibility that Government agencies may have failed in regulation did not automatically disqualify the Union.
Otherwise, no effective representative mechanism would remain.
The Court therefore used necessity to uphold the arrangement.
But it also emphasised that victims’ interests had to remain central.

The Supreme Court upheld the Act.
It allowed the Union to represent the victims.
Use this case for: bias rule may yield to necessity in exceptional public-interest situations.