The Fundamental Right to Privacy: Part I
SOURCES
Amber Sinha
Introduction
Last month’s judgment by the nine judge referral bench was an emphatic
endorsement of the the constitutional right to privacy. In the course of a 547 page
judgment, the bench affirmed the fundamental nature of the right to privacy
reading it into the values of dignity and liberty. The judgment refers to scholarly
works and jurisprudence not only in India but other legal systems such as USA,
South Africa, EU and UK, while recognising a broad right to privacy with various
dimensions across spatial, informational and decisional spheres. The judgment has
been instructive not only in its recognition of the rights to privacy but also for
cutting through the inconsistencies in the body of jurisprudence in India on the
issue of privacy and its consideration of questions which would prove instructive
for the courts while adjudicating on the issues related to privacy. This judgment is,
without doubt, a landmark decision and joins the most important decisions on
fundamental rights jurisprudence in India. In the course of a few short papers, we
will dissect the various aspects of the right to privacy as put forth by this bench. As
recognized by the bench itself, there is a large body of jurisprudence on privacy
1
which has been upheld, and there are various excellent accounts of the history of
cases dealing with the right to privacy in India. However, in these papers, we will
focus on the reasoning followed in this judgment, and limit our discussion of past
cases to the ones most relevant to that reasoning.
Background
In 2012, Justice K S Puttaswamy, a former Karnataka High Court Judge, filed a
petition before the Supreme Court questioning the validity of the Aadhaar project
due its lack of legislative basis (since then the Aadhaar Act was passed in 2016) and
its transgressions on our fundamental rights.1 Over time, a number of other
petitions also made their way to the apex court challenging different aspects of the
Aadhaar project.2 Since then, five different interim orders by the Supreme Court3
have stated that no person should suffer because they do not have an Aadhaar
number. Aadhaar, according to the Supreme Court, could not be made mandatory to
avail benefits and services from government schemes. Further, the court has limited
the use of Aadhaar to only specific schemes, namely, LPG, PDS, MNREGA, National
Social Assistance Program, the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojna and EPFO.4
The then Attorney General, Mukul Rohatgi, in a hearing before the court in July,
2015, stated that there is no constitutionally guaranteed right to privacy.5 His
1
http://judis.nic.in/temp/494201232392013p.txt
2
W.P(C) No. 439 of 2012 titled S. Raju v. Govt. of India and Others pending before the D.B. of the High
Court of Judicature at Madras and PIL No. 10 of 2012 titled Vickram Crishna and Others v. UIDAI and
Others pending before the High Court of Judicature at Bombay were transferred to the Supreme
Court vide Order dated September 23, 2013. Also W.P. No. 833 of 2013 titled Aruna Roy & Anr Vs Union
of India & Ors, W.P. No. 829 of 2013 titled S G Vombatkere & Anr Vs Union of India & Ors and
Petition(s) for Special Leave to Appeal (Crl) No(s). 2524/2014 titled Unique Identification Authority of
India & another v. Central Bureau of Investigation.
3
http://judis.nic.in/supremecourt/imgs1.aspx?filename=42841
4
http://supremecourtofindia.nic.in/FileServer/2015-10-16_1444976434.pdf
5
“Privacy not a fundamental right, argues Mukul Rohatgi for Govt as Govt affidavit says otherwise”,
Legally India, July 23, 2015, available at
2
reliance was on two Supreme Court judgments in M atish Chandra,6
P Sharma v. S
tate of Uttar Pradesh,7 both cases, decided by eight and six
and Kharak Singh v. S
judge benches respectively, denied the existence of a constitutional right to
privacy. As the subsequent judgments, which upheld the right to privacy were by
smaller benches, Mr. Rohatgi claimed that MP Sharma and K
harak Singh still
prevailed over them, until they were overruled by a larger bench. In order to clear
the judicial uncertainty around the existence of the right to privacy, the matter was
referred to a constitutional bench. Almost two years after the referral, the
constitutional bench was set up to adjudicate on this issue. The questions before
this bench were two fold: 1) do the judgments in M
.P. Sharma v. Satish Chandra and
Kharak Singh v. S
tate of U.P. lead to the conclusion that there is no fundamental
right to privacy, b) whether the decisions in the later cases upholding a right to
privacy were correct.8 In a series of short papers, we look at the various sources of
the constitutional right to privacy, the structure of the right and its various
dimensions, and finally, the scope of the right and to what extent and what manner
may it be limited.
Sources of the right to privacy
Much of the debate and discussion in the hearings before the constitutional bench
was regarding where in the Constitution a right to privacy may be located. In this
http://www.legallyindia.com/home/privacy-not-a-fundamental-right-argues-mukul-rohatgi-for-govt
-as-govt-affidavit-says-otherwise-20150723-6332.
6
AIR 1954 SC 30.
7
AIR 1963 SC 1295.
8
“Therefore, in our opinion to give a quietus to the kind of controversy raised in this batch of cases
once for all, it is better that the ratio decidendi of M.P. Sharma (supra) and Kharak Singh (supra) is
scrutinized and the jurisprudential correctness of the subsequent decisions of this Court where the
right to privacy is either asserted or referred be examined and authoritatively decided by a Bench of
appropriate strength.” h ttp://judis.nic.in/supremecourt/imgs1.aspx?filename=42841.
3
paper, we analyse the different provisions and tools of interpretations use by the
bench to read a right to privacy in Part III of the Constitution.
1. Privacy as a postulate of Dignity
Article 21 of the Constitution of India guarantees the right to life and liberty. The
judgment draws on the rich body of jurisprudence on Article 21 to clearly
articulate this.
a) The Preamble
As mentioned by Gautam Bhatia,9 a constitutional scholar, the common
thread that runs through the entire privacy judgment and the different
opinions is the primacy of the individual in the Constitution. In this respect,
Chandrachud J. states that “the individual lies at the core of constitutional
focus and the ideals of justice, liberty, equality and fraternity animate the
vision of securing a dignified existence to the individual.” The judgment
refers to Kesavananda Bharati v. State of Kerala10 to emphasise that the
Preamble is a part of the Constitution. Dignity as a constitutional value is a
very important element of the scheme of protections offered in the
Constitution to individuals. Nariman J. traced the constitutional foundations
of privacy to the Preamble stating as follow:
“The dignity of the individual encompasses the right of the individual
to develop to the full extent of his potential. And this development can
only be if an individual has autonomy over fundamental personal
9
Gautam Bhatia, “The Supreme Court’s Right to Privacy Judgment – I: Foundations”, Indian
Constitutional Law and Philosophy Blog, available at
https://indconlawphil.wordpress.com/2017/08/27/the-supreme-courts-right-to-privacy-judgment-i-
foundations/.
10
(1973) 4 SCC 225.
4
choices and control over dissemination of personal information which
may be infringed through an unauthorized use of such information.”
b) Article 21
Over the course of the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence on the right to life and
liberty under Article 21, we see repeated allusions to ‘dignity’ and ‘life beyond
animal existence’ in order to expand the nature and scope of protection
under Article 21. The use of the dignity principle to configure the right to life
is key to the idea of Article 21 going beyond protection of limbs and faculties,
the rather the right to life included within its scope the ‘right to live with
human dignity’.11 While the articulation of a normative framework to apply the
concept of ‘dignity’ has been missing, the courts have over the course of
various cases, creating an inclusive list to understand dignity, which includes
the ability of express oneself, nutrition and clothing.
Chandrachud J. thus, describes privacy as intrinsic to a dignity based idea of
the right to life:
“Privacy with its attendant values assures dignity to the individual and
it is only when life can be enjoyed with dignity can liberty be of true
substance. Privacy ensures the fulfilment of dignity and is a core value
which the protection of life and liberty is intended to achieve…….The
autonomy of the individual is associated over matters which can be
kept private. These are concerns over which there is a legitimate
expectation of privacy. The body and the mind are inseparable
elements of the human personality. The integrity of the body and the
sanctity of the mind can exist on the foundation that each individual
possesses an inalienable ability and right to preserve a private space in
11
Francis Coralie Mullin v Administrator, Union Territory of Delhi, (1981) 1 SCC 608.
5
which the human personality can develop. Without the ability to make
choices, the inviolability of the personality would be in doubt.
Recognizing a zone of privacy is but an acknowledgment that each
individual must be entitled to chart and pursue the course of
development of personality. H
ence privacy is a postulate of human
dignity itself.” ( emphasis supplied)
2. Privacy as a subset of personal liberty
Any discussion of the scope of protection offered by Article 21 is incomplete
opalan12 which (with the exception of the
without going back to the position in G
opinion of Fazl Ali J., noted repeatedly with appreciation in this judgment) held
that articles in Part III occupied exclusive jurisdiction. Gopalan also involved a
protracted discussion on the contents of the rights under Article 21. Amongst
the majority itself, the opinion was divided. While Sastri J. and Mukherjea J. took
the restrictive view that limiting the protections to bodily restraint and
detention, Kania J. and Das J. take a broader view for it to include the right to
sleep, play etc. Through RC Cooper13 and M
aneka14, the Supreme Court took
steps to reverse the majority opinion in Gopalan and it was established that
that the freedoms and rights in Part III could be addressed by more than one
provision. The expansion of ‘personal liberty’ has began in K
harak Singh where
the unjustified interference with a person’s right to live in his house, was held
to be violative of Article 21. The reasoning in Kharak Singh draws heavily from
Munn v. Illinois15 which held life to be “more than mere animal existence.”
Curiously, after taking this position Kharak Singh fails to recognise a
fundamental right to privacy (analogous to the Fourth Amendment protection in
12
A K Gopalan v. State of Madras, 1950 SCR 88.
13
R C Cooper v. U
nion of India, 1970 SCR (3) 530.
14
Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India, 1978 SCR (2) 621.
15
94 US 113 (1877).
6
US) under Article 21. The position taken in K
harak Singh was to extrapolate the
same method of wide interpretation of ‘personal liberty’ as was accorded to
‘life’. M
aneka which evolved the test for enumerated rights within Part III says
that the claimed right must be an integral part of or of the the same nature as
the named right. It says that the claimed must be ‘in reality and substance
nothing but an instance of the exercise of the named fundamental right’.16 The
clear reading of privacy into ‘personal liberty’ in this judgment is effectively a
correction of the inherent inconsistencies in the positions taken by the majority
in K
harak Singh. This passage in the judgment sums up the position of privacy
as subset of privacy:
“The ability of the individual to protect a zone of privacy enables the
realization of the full value of life and liberty. Liberty has a broader
meaning of which privacy is a subset. All liberties may not be exercised
in privacy. Yet others can be fulfilled only within a private space.
Privacy enables the individual to retain the autonomy of the body
and mind.”
3. Privacy resonates through the entirety of Part III of the Constitution
(Chapter on Fundamental Rights)
The decision to not ground privacy only within the ambit of a specific facet of
Article 21, but the court’s willingness to recognise the significance of privacy to
various other rights may prove to be the most important legacy of the privacy
judgment. The bench was assisted greatly by the well-reasoned arguments
made by the counsels arguing on behalf of the petitioners who pointed the
primacy of privacy to the values of autonomy, dignity and liberty, but also to
specific rights such as freedom of speech and expression, freedom of
16
Supra Note 14.
7
association, freedom of religion and the right to equality. All the opinions
agreed with this contention choosing to read privacy not just within a specific
facet of liberty or dignity within Article 19 but across the entire spectrum of
rights enumerated under Part III depending upon the facts in question. The
basis for this broad reading was that privacy is intrinsic to the right to
self-determination and must be located not merely within the right to life and
personal liberty, but to the different exercises of freedoms which privacy
enables.
While this reasoning is a logical extension of the constitutional principles
established in Cooper and Maneka that rights do not occupy separate and
exclusive fields, but could be addressed by multiple provisions, the decision to
extend this principle to the right to privacy is significant. It recognises the
magnified relevance of the right to privacy in light of the increasing incursions
into private spaces of individuals by both public and private actors, and the
extent to which these intrusions compromise the autonomy of an individual.
The following passage by Chandrachud J. sums up the significance of privacy in
the exercise of rights across Part III of the Constitution:
“The freedoms under Article 19 can be fulfilled where the individual is
entitled to decide upon his or her preferences. Read in conjunction with
Article 21, liberty enables the individual to have a choice of preferences
on various facets of life including what and how one will eat, the way
one will dress, the faith one will espouse and a myriad other matters on
which autonomy and self-determination require a choice to be made
within the privacy of the mind. The constitutional right to the freedom
of religion under Article 25 has implicit within it the ability to choose a
faith and the freedom to express or not express those choices to the
world. These are some illustrations of the manner in which privacy
8
facilitates freedom and is intrinsic to the exercise of liberty. The
Constitution does not contain a separate article telling us that privacy
has been declared to be a fundamental right. Nor have we tagged the
provisions of Part III with an alpha suffixed right of privacy: this is not
an act of judicial redrafting. Dignity cannot exist without privacy. Both
reside within the inalienable values of life, liberty and freedom which
the Constitution has recognised. Privacy is the ultimate expression of
the sanctity of the individual. It is a constitutional value which
straddles across the spectrum of fundamental rights and protects for
the individual a zone of choice and self-determination.”
4. International Instruments
The Supreme Court of India has been remarkably receptive to the principles in
international law and has developed jurisprudence in active dialogue with
norms in international instruments. Article 51(c) of the Constitution directs the
State to ‘endeavour to’, inter alia, ‘foster respect for international law and treaty
obligations in the dealings of organised peoples with one another’.
Kesavananda Bharati is fairly instructive in its view that the court ‘must
interpret the language of the Constitution, if not intractable, which is after all a
municipal law, in the light of the United Nations Charter and the solemn
declaration subscribed to by India’.17 The courts have ‘incorporated’
international conventions as well as treaties in several ways. This extends to not
just treaties which have been explicitly incorporated in the domestic law, but
also to treaties which have not been incorporated.
The most obvious example of such principles being given effect is P
UCL v. U
nion
of India,18 in which the right to privacy was recognized in light of the
17
AIR 1997 SC 568.
18
Supra Note 10.
9
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 1966 (Article 17)19 and the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948 (Article 12),20 to which India is a
party, both of which recognise a right to privacy. The ICCPR specifically casts an
obligation on the signatory states to to respect, protect and fulfil its norms. The
judgment also finds it relevant that while becoming a party to the ICCPR, India
filed reservations against Articles 1, 9 and 13, however, no such reservation was
filed against Article 17 and this indicates the acceptance of the right to privacy
and a commitment to respect and protect it. Therefore as stated in judgment:
“Where there is a contradiction between international law and a
domestic statute, the Court would give effect to the latter. In the
present case, there is no contradiction between the international
obligations which have been assumed by India and the Constitution.
The Court will not readily presume any inconsistency. On the
contrary, constitutional provisions must be read and interpreted in a
manner which would enhance their conformity with the global human
rights regime. India is a responsible member of the international
community and the Court must adopt an interpretation which
abides by the international commitments made by the country
particularly where its constitutional and statutory mandates
indicate no deviation.”
19
Article 17 of the ICCPR states:
1. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his privacy, family, home or
correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his honour and reputation.
2. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
20
Article 12 of the UDHR states: The Right to Privacy. Nobody should try to harm our good name.
Nobody has the right to come into our home, open our letters, or bother us or our family without a
good reason.
10
5. Privacy as a natural right
All the opinions, aside from that of Chelameswar J., recognise that privacy is a
natural right, which exists as an inalienable, inherent and inviolable rights of
individuals, and by that logic, predates and exist regardless of any other
constitutional provisions to the contrary. This opinion is buttressed by a very
belated, yet laudable overruling of the infamous majority opinion in A
DM
hivkant Shukla.21 The majority position in ADM Jabalpur was that the
Jabalpur v. S
Constitution was the sole repository of fundamental rights when these rights
are suspended through a scheme provided for by the same Constitution, there
was no basis to claim those rights. This position has been expressly overruled
by the privacy judgment which advances the proposition that some rights are
not conferred by the Constitution, rather that Constitution merely recognizes
what already inheres in individuals. The position taken by Chelameswar J. is a
little different. Much like his brother judges, he recognizes the right to privacy
as fundamental and inalienable. However, instead to tracing this inalienable
nature to natural rights which may predate the constitutional protection, he
seems to view the Constitution as the source of these rights. Despite this
distinction, Chelameswar’ J’s opinion seems to agree to with the majority
position that such rights are ‘inalienable’, and therefore may not be taken away
even through a constitutional scheme.
6. Comparative Law
Despite having only persuasive value, comparative law has played a very
significant role in shaping the case-law on privacy in India. Since M
P Sharma,
the courts have grappled with the extent to which comparative developments in
the law on privacy should guide our own law. This judgment refers to judgments
21
1976 SCR 172.
11
from United Kingdom, United States, South Africa, Canada, European Court of
Human Rights, the Court of Justice of European Union and the Inter-American
Court of Human Rights. In each of the these jurisdictions, the judgment traces
the history of the judicial pronouncements on privacy and how the law had
evolved over time. While not having binding value as precedence, these cases
are indicative of the legal positions on privacy as a right in different
jurisdictions, and have tremendous persuasive value for the Supreme Court
which has been willing to internalise norms developed in other jurisdictions and
interpreting them instrumentally to dispense justice.22
The approach in reading into the different dimensions of the right to privacy,
draws heavily from foreign jurisprudence, and exhibits the Indian court’s
approach to assimilate international judicial interpretive trends. This is
extremely important as the fundamental rights must constantly evolve beyond
mere textualism to fulfill their role in a changing world.
Conclusion
Through this paper, we have seen the different sources and interpretive
techniques employed by the Supreme Court in this case to clearly read a
fundamental right to privacy in the Constitution of India. While the next few
papers will attempt to deal with the nature of this right, what this paper sought
to portray was the sources to which the court traced the very existence of this
right. In this respect, the bench has done an exemplary job of clearly laying
down the basis for the constitutional right, and has removed any doubt not only
about the existence of the right, but also where we draw it from. The most
significant takeaways from this part of the judgment is that the right to privacy
Lavanya Rajamani, “International Law and Constitutional Schema”, in Sujit Choudhary, Madhav
22
Khosla, and Pratap Bhanu Mehta, ed., The Oxford Handbook of the Indian Constitution, Oxford
University Press: Oxford, 2016.
12
is inalienable and may not be taken away under any constitutional scheme;
further, the right to privacy rests not merely in any one aspect of liberty, but
emanates from the entirety of the Part III of the Constitution.
13
