The Firm has extensive experience in both filing and defending writ petitions before the Supreme Court of India, the High Court of Delhi and various other High Courts across India. We regularly advise on how arbitrary action of State authorities should be addressed, right from formulating strategy and correspondence with State authorities to filing writ petitions on behalf of clients and representing them before the Supreme Court and various High Courts.

Our advocates also have expertise in handling Public Interest Litigation, a subspecies of writ litigation that often evolves into a batch of matters involving wide-ranging and more significant legal issues. Our litigation lawyers regularly defend corporate clients in Public Interest Litigation initiated against them and, on occasion, in appropriate cases, filed on behalf of individuals pursuing public causes.

Key highlights

• The Firm represented Mr. Ratan N. Tata, the former Chairman of the Tata Group in a Writ Petition filed by him in the Supreme Court, asserting his right to privacy in a case involving the indiscriminate publication of various tapes containing private conversations.

• The Firm represented MSD Pharmaceuticals Pvt. Ltd., a subsidiary company of Merck & Co., Inc. and the manufacturer of Gardasil (an HPV vaccine for the prevention of cervical cancer), in a Public Interest Litigation before the Supreme Court, seeking revocation of licenses issued to GlaxoSmithKline Asia Pvt. Ltd. and MSD Pharmaceuticals Pvt. Ltd. for the sale of HPV vaccines and challenging the inclusion of the vaccines in the national immunization programme carried out in the States of Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat. The Firm, further, represented MSD Pharmaceuticals Pvt. Ltd. before the Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court on the question of whether a Parliamentary Standing Committee Report can be relied on by the Supreme Court in a writ petition under Articles 32 or 136 of the Constitution of India.

• The Firm represented the interests of Tata Steel Ltd. before the Supreme Court to have the city of Jamshedpur declared an Industrial Township under Article 243Q of the Constitution of India which permits State Governments to notify certain areas as industrial townships if municipal services in that area are being provided by an industrial establishment. As a result of the Firm’s writ litigation undertaken on behalf of Tata Steel, the Jharkhand Government made an in-principle decision to declare Jamshedpur (which owes its high levels of development almost entirely to the Tatas) as an Industrial Township under the Constitution.

• The Firm successfully represented, GVK EMRI, a leading provider of emergency medical services in many states, in a Writ Petition filed against them in the Supreme Court, challenging a multi-crore contract which had been awarded to it.

• The Firm represents Air Asia International Ltd. and Tata Singapore Airlines in a series of litigations which began with a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by Dr. Subramanian Swamy challenging the approval by the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) to Air Asia Investment Ltd (Malaysian) to invest along with Tata Industries Ltd. in the activity of operation of a scheduled passenger airline.

• The Firm has also represented Tata Steel Ltd. and Tata Motors Ltd. respectively in Public Interest Litigations (PILs) filed to address the alleged issues of illegal mining and vehicular pollution.

• The Firm has represented Google India Pvt. Ltd. in Public Interest Litigations (PILs) filed in the Supreme Court to address the alleged issues of advertisements promoting sex selection and videos containing sexual violence which some persons may seek to upload and steps which may be taken by Google and other similarly placed platforms to prevent the same.