The Supreme Court will pronounce its landmark verdict on whether citizens can claim right to privacy as a fundamental right on Thursday.
A nine-judge Bench order will pave the way for consideration of a batch of petitions that challenges the validity of Aadhaar. Since the issue of privacy was central to the Government collecting personal data of citizens under Aadhaar, the Centre has argued that privacy as a fundamental right does not exist in India. Then Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi had cited two decisions by the SC — an eight-judge Bench in the MP Sharma v Satish Chandra (1954) case and a six-judge Bench in the Kharak Singh v Union of India (1963) case — to buttress its point.
Although later decisions did hold privacy to be a fundamental right, the determination was by a Bench of less than five judges. Thus the two decisions against privacy technically hold the field.
The Centre argued that privacy cannot be held as a fundamental right as this was specifically considered and rejected by the Constitution makers. It got support from several States, chiefly the BJP-ruled States. However, petitioners who challenged the aadhaar programme mounted an attack against the Centre and found support from the non-BJP ruled States of West Bengal, Punjab, and Karnataka.
Any decision by this nine-judge Bench will serve the benchmark on privacy, bringing curtains on whatever was decided by the apex court so far. It will further impact other related issues involving transfer of information from WhatsApp to Facebook, currently a question pending consideration before a five-judge Bench of the apex court.