Right to Privacy is a fundamental right: Supreme Court

Mangalore Today News Network

New Delhi, Aug 24: The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that privacy is a fundamental right because it is intrinsic to the right to life.

"Right to Privacy is an integral part of Right to Life and Personal Liberty guaranteed in Article 21 of the Constitution," the SC’s nine-judge bench+ ruled unanimously.

It added that the right to privacy is intrinsic to the entire fundamental rights chapter of the Constitution.

This judgement is a blow to Aadhaar as the Centre now has to convince SC that forcing citizens to give a sample of their fingerprints and their iris scan does not violate privacy.

The SC bench’s judgment will touch the lives of 134 crore Indians. It was not meant to decide on the fate of Aadhaar, just on whether privacy of an individual was a part of their inviolable fundamental rights. What this means is a five-judge bench of the SC will test the validity of Aadhaar on the touchstone of privacy as a fundamental right.

The apex court’s nine-judge bench overruled previous judgments on the issue- an eight-judge bench judgment in the MP Sharma case and a six-judge bench judgment in Kharak Singh case, both of which had ruled that privacy is not a fundamental right+ . The bench comprised Justices Khehar, J Chelameswar, S A Bobde, R K Agrawal, R F Nariman, A M Sapre, D Y Chandrachud, Sanjay K Kaul and S Abdul Nazeer.

Attorney general K K Venugopal, who had argued that right to privacy cannot be a fundamental right, welcomed the SC decision.