FOCUS ON AADHAAR AS SC TO GIVE RULING ON PRIVACY

A nine-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court will pronounce its judgment on Thursday on whether right to privacy is a fundamental right. It had reserved its ruling on August 2 after hearing the matter for two weeks.

Such a judgment would have an immediate impact on the validity of Aadhaar Card, which is the bedrock of various government welfare programmes.

The issue is pending before a three judge bench which has sought the Constitution Bench's guidance in view of many benches not following the rulings of two previous Constitution Benches of eight judges in 1954 and six judges in 1964, who had rejected the right to privacy as a fundamental right. Chief Justice of India, Jagdish Singh Khehar, who retires on Friday heads the 9-judge Bench which he had constituted to settle the matter once and for all. The right to privacy judgment is also expected to be split, similar to the one on the triple talaq on Tuesday. This is because the cause list does not name of the judge who would pronounce it on behalf of the Bench. The CJI gets the first right to read the judgment, followed by other judges who may have different rulings.

It was retired Karnataka High Court judge K.S. Puttaswamy, who first mounted a Constitutional challenge to Aadhaar in 2013. The judgment will also have a bearing on the challenge to WhatsApp’s new privacy policy before another Bench in a petition challenging Delhi High Court’s September 23, 2016. Though several Supreme Court Benches of two and three judges have held the right to privacy as a fundamental right in various pronouncements in the last 55 years, the Centre cited the two judgments of the Constitution Bench that had held that it is not a fundamental right as such. It took the stand that the judgments of the larger Benches should hold the ground.

The Centre, however, surprised all when it conceded for the first time that privacy is certainly a fundamental right, but with a caveat that it is neither absolute nor could it be extended to "every aspect" of privacy. For that matter, no fundamental right is absolute.

The Unique Identification Authority of India, which issues the Aadhaar card, too asserted that the privacy should not be a fundamental right since there were sufficient safeguards to protect data collected by it from the people - their iris scan and finger prints. The issue also saw BJP-ruled Maharashtra and Gujarat standing by the Centre’s view while the Congress-ruled Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka and Puducherry and the Trinamool Congress-ruled West Bengal asserted that privacy is a fundamental right.