Supreme Court slaps Rs 10 lakh fine on Bihar MLA for filing ‘frivolous’ PIL

The Supreme Court made an example of RJD MLA Ravindra Singh on Friday by fining him Rs 10 lakh for wasting “precious judicial time” through frivolous litigation, thus sending a message to habitual PIL petitioners to be wary of hefty costs.

Half-an-hour before rejecting the plea for leniency of the Bihar legislator — he had questioned the veracity of an article published in a magazine in 1994 — a bench of Chief Justice J S Khehar and Justices N V Ramana and D Y Chandrachud had imposed a cost of Rs 1 lakh on a retired 66-year-old teacher from Maharashtra who had moved the SC to challenge a reservation related notification of the state government.