Right to Privacy

The right to privacy means that an individual has a protected sphere of personal life, choices, body, home, communications and information into which the State cannot intrude arbitrarily. The Supreme Court located this right within Article 21 by treating privacy as an essential element of dignity, autonomy and personal liberty. It also recognised privacy as having overlapping protection through other fundamental rights, especially where State action affects expression, association, movement, equality or bodily integrity.

Constitutional / legal basis

Article 21 of the Constitution protects life and personal liberty: no person shall be deprived of them except according to procedure established by law. In Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) v. Union of India (2017), a nine-judge Bench of the Supreme Court held that privacy is a constitutionally protected fundamental right, intrinsic to life, personal liberty and dignity under Article 21, and also connected with freedoms and equality under Part III. The Court also clarified that privacy is not an absolute right and may be restricted only by constitutionally valid State action.

Key points

• Privacy has multiple dimensions: bodily privacy, decisional autonomy, spatial privacy and informational privacy, including control over personal data and communications.
• The right is not expressly written as a separate Article in the Constitution; it has been judicially recognised as part of the guarantee of life and personal liberty under Article 21.
• Any restriction on privacy must satisfy legality: there must be a valid law authorising the intrusion, not merely an executive instruction without legal backing.
• The restriction must pursue a legitimate State aim, such as national security, prevention of crime, public order or protection of the rights and freedoms of others.
• The restriction must satisfy proportionality: the measure must have a rational connection with the aim, must not be excessive, and must balance the extent of privacy loss against the importance of the public purpose.
• Procedural safeguards are essential because privacy intrusions, especially surveillance and data collection, create risks of arbitrariness, profiling and misuse of State power.

How UPSC asks this