Right to Privacy: Puttaswamy Judgment and Aadhaar

Right to privacy is the constitutionally protected freedom of an individual to control vital aspects of their personal life — from bodily autonomy to personal information — without arbitrary interference by the state. In India, it is not written out as a separate fundamental right in the constitutional text; instead, the Supreme Court has located it within Article 21's guarantee of life and personal liberty, most decisively in the 2017 Puttaswamy judgment.

From Article 21 to an Expanding List of Rights

Article 21 states that no person shall be deprived of life or personal liberty except according to procedure established by law, and this protection extends to citizens and non-citizens alike. For decades, courts read this narrowly. That changed with Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India (1978), where the Supreme Court held that the word 'procedure' in Article 21 does not mean any procedure a legislature chooses to enact — it must be fair, just and reasonable. This judgment infused judicial review into Article 21 and turned it into a real safeguard against arbitrary legislation rather than a formality. Building on this reasoning, the Court went on to read a long list of unenumerated rights into Article 21 over the following decades, including the right to live with dignity, the right to a decent and pollution-free environment, the right to livelihood, the right to shelter, the right to health, the right to travel abroad, the right to a speedy trial, the right to free legal aid, and the right to privacy.

The Puttaswamy Judgment of 2017

The question of whether privacy itself was a fundamental right, rather than merely a common-law or statutory interest, came to a head in K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2017). The Supreme Court held that the right to privacy is protected as an intrinsic part of the right to life and personal liberty under Article 21, and also flows from the freedoms guaranteed elsewhere in Part III of the Constitution. The Court reasoned that privacy safeguards individual autonomy and recognises a person's ability to control vital aspects of their own life — decisions about their body, their beliefs, and their personal information.

At the same time, the judgment was careful to state that privacy is not an absolute right. Like other freedoms under Part III, it is subject to reasonable restrictions, meaning any law that encroaches on privacy must be able to withstand the same scrutiny applied to restrictions on other fundamental freedoms. In the specific context of Article 21, the Court held that an invasion of privacy must be backed by a law prescribing a procedure that is fair, just and reasonable, and that any such invasion of life or personal liberty must meet a three-fold test: legality, meaning a law must actually exist authorising the action; need, meaning the restriction must serve a legitimate state aim; and proportionality, meaning there must be a rational connection between the objective pursued and the means used to achieve it.

Overruling the Old Position

The Puttaswamy verdict did not arrive on a clean slate. It expressly overruled two earlier rulings — M.P. Sharma v. Satish Chandra (1954) and Kharak Singh v. State of U.P. (1962) — in both of which the Supreme Court had held that the Constitution did not protect a right to privacy. Puttaswamy also clarified that the various judgments delivered after Kharak Singh, which had already begun recognising elements of a right to privacy in specific contexts, stood on firmer ground once privacy itself was confirmed as a fundamental right rather than treated as an exception.

Why Aadhaar Made This Test Consequential

The Puttaswamy case reached the Supreme Court amid a wider constitutional challenge to the government's Aadhaar biometric identification programme, which involved the large-scale collection of personal and biometric data from residents. Because the case settled the constitutional status of privacy itself, the legality-need-proportionality test it laid down became the yardstick against which the Aadhaar scheme, and any comparable data-linked government programme, has to be assessed. Any provision that compels the collection, storage or sharing of personal data must be traceable to a valid law, must serve a legitimate state purpose, and must not go further than necessary to achieve that purpose.

Privacy Alongside the Right to Information

The balancing exercise between privacy and other public interests is visible elsewhere in Indian law as well. The Right to Information Act, 2005 guarantees the public a right to access information held by government bodies, ordinarily within thirty days of a request, and creates Information Commissions at the Central and State levels to adjudicate disputes over such requests. But the Act also carves out exceptions, including for information that would harm national security, breach commercial confidentiality, or invade personal privacy. This shows privacy operating not as an isolated doctrine confined to Article 21 litigation, but as a value that Parliament itself has had to weigh against transparency and accountability in ordinary legislation.

UPSC Relevance

Prelims

• The right to privacy has been placed by the Supreme Court under Article 21 of the Constitution.
• K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2017) declared the right to privacy a fundamental right.
• Puttaswamy overruled the earlier rulings in M.P. Sharma (1954) and Kharak Singh (1962).
• The Right to Information Act, 2005 provides for information requests to be answered within 30 days, subject to exceptions including privacy.

Mains

• Discuss how the Supreme Court's interpretation of Article 21 evolved from Maneka Gandhi (1978) to Puttaswamy (2017) in expanding the scope of personal liberty.
• Examine the legality-need-proportionality test laid down in Puttaswamy and its significance for evaluating state programmes that involve personal data collection.
• Right to privacy is not absolute. Discuss this statement with reference to the Puttaswamy judgment.

FAQ

Q1. Under which Article of the Constitution has the Supreme Court placed the right to privacy? The Supreme Court has placed the right to privacy under Article 21, which protects life and personal liberty.

Q2. What did the Puttaswamy judgment of 2017 decide? It held that the right to privacy is a fundamental right, intrinsic to Article 21 and to the freedoms guaranteed under Part III of the Constitution, though not an absolute right.

Q3. What is the three-fold test laid down in Puttaswamy for restricting privacy? Any restriction must satisfy legality (backed by an existing law), need (serving a legitimate state aim), and proportionality (a rational connection between the aim and the means used).

Q4. Which earlier judgments did Puttaswamy overrule? It overruled M.P. Sharma v. Satish Chandra (1954) and Kharak Singh v. State of U.P. (1962), both of which had held that the Constitution did not protect a right to privacy.

Q5. How is the right to privacy connected to the Aadhaar scheme? The Puttaswamy case arose amid constitutional challenges to the Aadhaar biometric identification programme, and the privacy test it established is used to assess whether such data-collecting government schemes are constitutionally valid.

Quick Revision

• Right to privacy = fundamental right under Article 21 (K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India, 2017).
• Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India (1978): 'procedure established by law' under Article 21 must be fair, just, reasonable.
• Puttaswamy overruled M.P. Sharma (1954) and Kharak Singh (1962).
• Privacy is not absolute; restrictions tested on legality, need, proportionality.
• Case arose amid the Aadhaar litigation; test now applies to data-linked state programmes.
• RTI Act, 2005: information requests answered in 30 days, subject to privacy and other exceptions.

Sources

• Constitution of India, Article 21 — legislative.gov.in
• K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2017) — Supreme Court of India Judgments
• Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India (1978) — Supreme Court of India Judgments
• Right to Information Act, 2005 — legislative.gov.in

Further Reference

For deeper reading on this topic and the wider polity syllabus, these standard works are recommended:

• M. Laxmikanth, Indian Polity (McGraw Hill) — the standard UPSC handbook.
• D.D. Basu, Introduction to the Constitution of India (LexisNexis) — authoritative constitutional-law treatment.
• The Constitution of India — Bare Act — the official text.

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