The Supreme Court of India has long been thought of as a court for the common people. This perception is rooted in the Indian constitution, which grants the Supreme Court original jurisdiction to hear cases alleging violation of fundamental rights. The Court has also embraced this vision of its role, and conceives of itself as an institution of “last resort for the oppressed and bewildered.” In a judgment from 1987, it expressly notes that it gives greater access to certain marginalized groups:this Court has always regarded the poor and the disadvantaged as entitled to preferential consideration than the rich and the affluent, the businessmen and the industrialists. The reason is that the weaker sections of Indian humanity have been deprived of justice for long, long years: they have had no access to justice on account of their poverty, ignorance and illiteracy. . . . The majority of the people of our country are subjected to this denial of access to justice and, overtaken by despair and helplessness, they continue to remain victims of an exploitative society where economic power is concentrated in the hands of a few and it is used for perpetuation of domination over large masses of human beings. This court has always, therefore, regarded it as its duty to come to the rescue of these deprived and vulnerable sections of Indian humanity in order to help them realise their economic and social entitlements and to bring to an end their oppression and exploitation.The Court’s self-conscious pro-poor discursion is most evident in its public interest jurisprudence, through which the Court removed many procedural barriers to accessing the Court; and assumed wide ranging remedial powers to ameliorate a range of socio-economic injustices.