The case at a glance

Dr Mohiuddin Farooque v Bangladesh (1997) 49 DLR (AD) 1 (Appellate Division). Also known as the FAP-20 case. Holding: “any person aggrieved” in Article 102 of the Constitution includes a person or organisation espousing a genuine public cause — public interest litigation is constitutionally at home in Bangladesh.

The story

Dr Mohiuddin Farooque, founder Secretary-General of the Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association (BELA), challenged a component of the Flood Action Plan (FAP-20) in Tangail, contending that the project threatened the environment, livelihoods and property of over a million people in the project area. The High Court Division initially rejected the petition at the threshold: Dr Farooque, it was said, was not himself an “aggrieved person,” and only the directly injured could invoke the writ jurisdiction.

The question

Does Article 102 confine the constitutional remedies to those personally and individually harmed — or can a citizen or association genuinely representing a public wrong stand before the Court on behalf of those who cannot?

The decision

The Appellate Division held that the expression “any person aggrieved” must be read in the light of a Constitution that begins with “We, the people”: where a public wrong or public injury is involved, an association or individual with a genuine, serious interest in the cause — and not a meddlesome interloper — has standing to seek the Court’s intervention. The people, the Court reasoned, are the ultimate repository of constitutional power, and the judiciary cannot be a distant abstraction available only to the wealthy or the directly injured.

Why it still matters

This single judgment made possible the entire tradition of public interest litigation in Bangladesh — the environmental cases, the labour rights cases, the challenges to unlawful detention and municipal neglect that followed. Every PIL filed today walks through the door Dr Farooque opened. It also gave Bangladeshi environmental law its founding moment: the recognition that a right to life worth the name includes the environment in which that life must be lived.