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Justice K S Puttaswamy, who passed away in Bengaluru on Monday, has an important place in the history of development of constitutional rights in the country. He was the lead petitioner in the case which led the Supreme Court to recognise that a citizen’s right to privacy was a fundamental right under Article 21 of the Constitution.
It was decades after he retired as a judge of the Karnataka High Court that he decided to challenge the legal validity of the Aadhaar scheme which had been introduced without legislative support. He felt the mandatory enrolment provision under the programme was a violation of the privacy of the citizen as an individual. He was 86 when he filed his case in 2012 and was 91 when the court upheld it and issued a ruling which is considered to be one of its seminal rulings in favour of citizen rights.
The verdict by a nine-judge bench recognised a major right in the form of the right to privacy which had hardly received attention as a constitutional right. It put the individual citizen at the centre of the constitutional scheme and impacted judicial thinking on rights in many ways since then. The bench headed by then Chief Justice of India J S Khehar overturned two previous decisions by an eight-judge and a six-judge bench – M P Sharma’s case in 1954 and Kharak Singh’s case in 1962 – which had held that privacy was not a fundamental right.
Importantly, it also overturned the controversial ADM Jabalpur case judgement which had held that fundamental rights could be suspended during a state of Emergency. It also inspired some important future judgements. It led to the striking down of Section 377 of the IPC on homosexuality the next year. It was on the basis of the Puttaswamy case judgement that the court struck down Section 497 of the IPC which criminalised adultery.
The right to privacy upheld by the court has formed the basis for many other judgements. It is the touchstone for the legal challenge to legislations like the Digital Data Protection Act, 2023, and many executive decisions and actions relating to surveillance of citizens, collection of personal data, and freedom of speech and expression.
It is being challenged now as an idea and as a right, and so a reminder of Justice Puttaswamy’s contribution to making it a prime right is relevant and appropriate. He maintained his privacy and exercised his right to it, and in the best judicial tradition, did not attract attention to himself. Karnataka and the country have lost an eminent person who was given to quiet public service and who helped to change our idea of ourselves as empowered citizens.