SC reserves order on right to privacy

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Wednesday reserved its judgment on whether the right to privacy can be considered a fundamental right under the Indian Constitution. The nine-judge Constitution Bench headed by Chief Justice J.S. Khehar reserved the order after hearing the matter in the last two weeks.

A nine-judge Constitution Bench on Wednesday concluded a fortnight-long hearing on whether the right to privacy is deemed a fundamental right or not, but reserved the verdict without setting a date for delivering its verdict.

The said Bench was set up on July 18 and headed by Chief Justice Jagdish Singh Khehar. The Bench heard arguments over three days each week by lawyers representing the Centre, state governments and individual petitioners who contended that the collection of personal data under the Aadhaar infringed on the right to privacy.

Is the right to privacy a fundamental right guaranteed under the Indian Constitution was the limited question that had cropped up in the context of legal challenges to the Aadhaar number, which has now become the bedrock of government welfare programmes, tax administration network and online financial transactions.

Arguments to this effect were opened by senior advocate Gopal Subramanium with a strong contention that privacy was not a shade of a fundamental right but as one that was “inalienable and quintessential to the construction of the Constitution.” He insisted that the concept of privacy was embedded in the right to liberty/dignity.

Shyam Divan, a senior advocate appearing for one of the petitions, sought to define “privacy” as one that includes bodily integrity, personal autonomy, protection from state surveillance and freedom of dissent/movement/though. Starting its arguments on July 26, the Centre for the first time conceded that privacy is certainly a fundamental right under the Constitution, but with a caveat that it is neither absolute nor could it be extended to “every aspect” of privacy.

Attorney general K.K. Venugopal submitted that privacy was at best a “subspecies of liberty and every aspect could not qualify as being fundamental in nature.”

Following this, four state governments -- Karnataka, Punjab, West Bengal, Himachal Pradesh -- and the Union Territory of Puducherry backed the constitutionality of the right to privacy. The states of Haryana and Kerala also joined the proceedings.

Once the privacy question is settled by the Constitution Bench, the remaining issues related to Aadhaar will be heard by a smaller Bench of the Supreme Court