Right to Privacy and the Puttaswamy Judgment

A retired judge in his mid-eighties challenged a fingerprint-scanning government scheme. By the time the verdict came five years later, he was 91. His case ended up deciding whether privacy is a fundamental right at all.

1The core holding, and how it happened

Must Know

• On 24 August 2017, a nine-judge Supreme Court bench unanimously held that the right to privacy is a Fundamental Right, protected under Article 21. The case is formally called Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) vs. Union of India.
• K.S. Puttaswamy was a retired Karnataka High Court judge, born in February 1926. In 2012, at age 86, he filed a petition calling mandatory Aadhaar enrolment “a clear violation of citizens’ privacy,” asking how such a scheme could roll out with no clear law behind it. Twenty-six more petitions were later clubbed with his.
• He lived to see the verdict, and later said: “I am completely vindicated by the decision.” He died in Bengaluru in October 2024, at 98.

So how did a challenge to one fingerprint scheme turn into a nine-judge constitutional ruling? Because two much older judgments stood in the way.

• The judgment overruled two earlier cases — M.P. Sharma (1954) and Kharak Singh (1962) — both of which had held privacy was not specifically protected by the Constitution.
• In August 2015, a smaller three-judge bench hearing the Aadhaar dispute noticed the government leaning on those two old rulings. It ordered a bench of “appropriate strength” to settle whether they still held. M.P. Sharma had been decided by eight judges, and Supreme Court practice requires an equal or larger bench to overrule one — that’s how nine judges ended up hearing the question.
• The Court found privacy to be an attribute of human dignity, covering personal intimacies like marriage, procreation, family, and sexual orientation.
• All nine judges agreed on the outcome, but still wrote six separate opinions rather than one single judgment. Justice Chandrachud wrote the lead opinion, joined by three others; the remaining five each wrote their own, some stressing dignity and autonomy, others control over personal information, or privacy as the foundation other freedoms depend on.

2How the case began

Good to Know

• The case began as a challenge to Aadhaar, the government’s biometric identification scheme. The privacy question arose because Aadhaar collects fingerprints, iris scans, and demographic data — exactly the kind of personal information Puttaswamy’s petition said needed real legal protection first.

3The separate Aadhaar ruling

Good to Know

• On 26 September 2018, a separate five-judge bench ruled on Aadhaar itself, upholding its core validity by a 4:1 majority.
• That verdict made linking Aadhaar to bank accounts and mobile numbers no longer mandatory. It stayed required for filing income tax returns and getting a PAN.
• Justice D.Y. Chandrachud was the sole dissenting judge in 2018, opposing the Aadhaar Act’s validity — the same judge who had authored a key opinion in the 2017 privacy verdict.

4In the news: two 2026 privacy tests

Current Affairs

• On 29 May 2026, the Delhi High Court held that a “right to be forgotten” flows directly from Puttaswamy’s recognition of informational privacy under Article 21.
• The Court laid down a framework directing Google and Indian Kanoon to de-index or mask judicial records — like acquittals, quashed cases, and matrimonial disputes — from name-based searches.
• In July 2026, Delhi Police deployed real-time facial recognition vehicles (“Ikshana”), smart spectacles (“AjnaLens”), drones, and fingerprint apps to scan demonstrators at a Jantar Mantar protest.
• Kerala MP A.A. Rahim then petitioned the Supreme Court, arguing this violated Articles 14, 19, and 21. In August 2026, a bench led by CJI Surya Kant agreed to hear the plea, tagging it with other pending protest-related petitions.
• The argument rests directly on Puttaswamy’s own three-part test for any privacy intrusion: it needs a real law behind it, a legitimate aim, and proportionality. Delhi Police’s defence is that the scans only matched people with serious criminal histories, with human verification — the case is still pending.

5A constitutional floor

Great to Know

• By locating privacy within Article 21’s “life and liberty,” the Court made it something the state cannot take away by ordinary legislation. It became a constitutional floor, not a policy choice Parliament could simply legislate around.

6Legal foundation for later rulings

Great to Know

• This 2017 judgment became the legal foundation for later rulings, including decriminalising Section 377 (2018) and recognising individual autonomy in personal choices.
• It also shaped India’s approach to data protection — the 2023 Digital Personal Data Protection Act traces its constitutional justification directly back to this case.
• The judgment shows how a single individual’s challenge to one government scheme can produce a constitutional principle that reaches far beyond the scheme’s own facts.

7How exams test this

Quick Q&A

• What did the Supreme Court decide on 24 August 2017? That the right to privacy is a Fundamental Right, protected under Article 21 — a unanimous nine-judge ruling.
• Why did it take nine judges to decide this? Two older rulings (1954 and 1962) had said privacy wasn’t specially protected. Overruling the 1954 one (decided by eight judges) required an equal or larger bench.
• Did the Puttaswamy ruling strike down Aadhaar? No — that was a separate 2018 ruling, which upheld Aadhaar’s core validity but made bank and mobile linking optional.
• What test does Puttaswamy require before the state can intrude on privacy? A three-part test: a real law authorising it, a legitimate aim, and proportionality — the same test now being argued in the 2026 facial-recognition case.