Retired civil servant H D Shourie and his NGO Common Cause were to the system and bureaucracy what the proverbial red rag is for the bull, knocking at the doors of the courts against what they perceived as injustice.
Shourie, 93, died in New Delhi on Tuesday.
He championed the common man's cause by fighting for protection of their rights before the courts.
Shourie served the public for more than 30 years as an Indian Civil Services official but actually he never retired from public service till he breathed his last.
He prepared petitions all by himself before sending them to lawyers, bringing to court's notice the violations of fundamental rights of common man.
Shourie, through his 25-year-old NGO Common Cause, filed a whopping 70 writ petitions before the Supreme Court and the Delhi high court.
These public interest litigations, unlike the recent trend of petitions seeking publicity, always got due attention from both the Bench and the Bar.
His first notable brush with success was in 1980 when he successfully challenged in the Supreme Court the upward revision of pension only to government employees, who retired after April 1, 1979.
The apex court allowed his petition and directed the government to pay all retired employees their enhanced pension.
If one has legal right to information today, it was almost a single-handed effort on the part of Shourie, who five years ago started a crusade against the iron curtain over what happened in government.
Another major achievement of his NGO was the detailed inquiry ordered in 1996 by Supreme Court into the "misuse" of official position by then petroleum minister Satish Sharma in allotments of petrol pumps and dealership of LPG.
The result was allotment of hundreds of petrol pumps out of the minister's discretionary quota were cancelled and were auctioned in public.
Delhi Rent Control Act, pollution, regulating the election expenses by the political parties, regulating broadcast by cable operators, Delhi Master Plan, iodisation of salt... the list of his achievements is endless.
Shourie presented meticulously researched petitions convincing the courts to take action.
It was Shourie who dared even the advocates, who used to paralyse the courts with frequent strikes much to the discomfort of litigants.
On his PIL, the Supreme Court declared strike by lawyers as illegal. Much before the consumer movement grew in the country and consumer redressal cells were established, Shourie had set up Common Cause, with prior permission from a similar NGO in USA, which today boasts of 5,000 members from different walks of life.
