A larger bench of five or more judges of the Supreme Court will decide whether “right to privacy” is a fundamental right and collecting and compiling both the demographic and biometric data of the res
A larger bench of five or more judges of the Supreme Court will decide whether “right to privacy” is a fundamental right and collecting and compiling both the demographic and biometric data of the residents of this country for Aadhaar card to be used for various purposes will violate the right to privacy.
A three-judge bench of Justices J. Chelameswar, S.A. Bobde and C. Nagappan on Tuesday referred a batch of petitions challenging the Aadhaar card to the Chief Justice H.L. Dattu for posting before a larger bench.
In its order, the bench said, “One of the grounds of attack on the scheme is that the very collection of such biometric data is violative of the right to privacy. Some of the petitioners assert that the right to privacy is implied under Article 21 of the Constitution.”
It said the attorney-general Mukul Rohatgi has quoted the decisions of eight and six judge benches according to which the existence of the fundamental right to privacy is doubtful. Further, the learned attorney-general also submitted that in a catena of decisions rendered subsequently, this court referred to “right to privacy” as a fundamental right, contrary to the judgments by two larger benches.
This, the bench said, has resulted in a jurisprudentially impermissible divergence of judicial opinions. These matters throw up for debate important questions — (i) whether there is any “right to privacy” guaranteed under our Constitution. (ii) If such a right exists, what is the source and what are the contours of such a right as there is no express provision in the Constitution adumbrating the right to privacy.”
The three-judge bench further added, “We are of the opinion that the cases on hand raise far reaching questions of importance involving interpretation of the Constitution of India. If the observations made in M.P. Sharma and Kharak Singh are to be read literally and accepted as the law of this country, the fundamental rights guaranteed under the Constitution and more particularly right to liberty under Article 21 would be denuded of vigour and vitality.”
