Advocate M.L. Sharma, who filed the public interest litigation, seeking the scrapping of the allocation of all 194 coal blocks and a probe into irregularities in the allocation in New Delhi.
| Photo Credit: The Hindu
Advocate Manohar Lal Sharma, who filed many public interest litigation petitions, including the coal block allocation scam case, has passed away.
Sharma, 69, passed away on Friday (December 19, 2025) after suffering from a kidney ailment, according to a family source.
In a landmark judgment, the top court in 2014 declared that the coal allocation between 1993 and 2009 was illegal, arbitrary, non-transparent and devoid of any procedure.
Sharma filed many PILs, including those challenging the government’s decision to abrogate Article 370, probe into the Pegasus spyware issue, and the Rafale case.
He also defended an accused in the 2012 Nirbhaya gang-rape case in Delhi.
Published – December 21, 2025 09:17 pm IST
