New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday held that the right to privacy is a fundamental right and is an integral part of the right to life and liberty.
The ruling by a nine-judge bench headed by Chief Justice JS Khehar will have a bearing on the challenge to the validity of the Aadhaar scheme on the grounds of its violating the right to privacy.
The SC bench’s judgment will touch the lives of 134 crore Indians. It was not meant to decide on the fate of Aadhaar, just on whether privacy of an individual was a part of their inviolable fundamental rights. What this means is a five-judge bench of the SC will test the validity of Aadhaar on the touchstone of privacy as a fundamental right.
The apex court’s nine-judge bench overruled previous judgments on the issue- an eight-judge bench judgment in the MP Sharma case and a six-judge bench judgment in Kharak Singh case, both of which had ruled that privacy is not a fundamental right. The bench comprised Justices Khehar, J Chelameswar, SA Bobde, R K Agrawal, RF Nariman, AM Sapre, DY Chandrachud, Sanjay K Kaul and S Abdul Nazeer.