New Delhi: Individual privacy is a fundamental right protected by the Constitution, the Supreme Court has ruled.
The ruling was delivered on August 24 by a rare nine-member bench and is based on an array of petitions that challenge the mandatory use of Aadhaar cards which assign a unique 12-digit ID to every citizen, ndtv.com reports.
The court decision will impact everyday lives. It will define the relationship between government and the citizen and will shape the way fundamental rights are understood for decades to come.
The apex court has said that right to privacy is an intrinsic part of Article 21, which protects liberty. It has overruled earlier verdicts on right to privacy.
The government had argued that the Constitution does not guarantee individual privacy as an inalienable fundamental right.
The petitioners said that enforcing the use of Aadhaar is an infringement of privacy. They also stressed that the Aadhaar database was originally presented as a purely voluntary program that offered to provide every Indian with an identity card.
The Aadhaar database links iris scans and fingerprints to more than 1 billion people. The court is not ruling today on the reach of Aadhaar – that will be decided separately by a smaller bench, the judges have said.
Critics argue that although the right to privacy is not explicitly set out in India’s Constitution, it nevertheless guarantees it implicitly.
“Our constitution gives us liberty to live life,” Gopal Subramanium, a lawyer for the petitioners, had argued before the judges. “Liberty existed even before the Constitution was drafted and it includes privacy. There cannot be a question of diminution but expansion of a right. Right to liberty includes freedom from encroachment on his or her privacy,” he had said.
The government says Aadhaar is essential for all services including tax returns, opening bank accounts and securing loans, pensions and cash transfers for those entitled to welfare schemes. It has rejected suggestions that the Aadhaar program, set up in 2009 by the previous Congress-led government, poses a threat to civil liberties.
Critics say the Aadhaar identity card links enough data to allow profiling because it creates a comprehensive profile of a person’s spending habits, their friends and acquaintances, the property they own, and a trove of other information.
There are fears the data could be misused by a government that argues Indians have no right to privacy. There have been recurring reports of Aadhaar details being accidentally released, including on government websites.
In May, security researchers discovered that the Aadhaar information of as many as 135 million people had leaked online. UIDAI, the agency that governs Aadhaar, has repeatedly said that its data is secure.
The petitioners:
Former Karnataka HC judge, KS Puttaswamy, now 91, filed the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in 2012 challenging the Aadhaar scheme, saying it violates fundamental rights to privacy and equality.
The Supreme Court has linked all the Aadhaar cases to this main case. Petitioners include activists Bezwada Wilson, Aruna Roy and Nikhil Dey.