## Facts

- The Government of India planned a national identity system assigning each resident a 12-digit Aadhaar number and issuing identification tied to personal information.
- The Aadhaar system contemplated linking identifiers to multiple categories of data, including demographic details, addresses, financial information, and biometric identifiers.
- Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) and other petitioners challenged the program, alleging it violated a constitutional right to privacy.
- The Union of India argued that prior Supreme Court decisions had rejected privacy as a constitutionally protected fundamental right.
- In the course of Aadhaar-related proceedings, the question whether privacy is a fundamental right was referred to a larger bench because earlier rulings from larger benches were understood to be inconsistent with later fundamental-rights doctrine.
- A nine-judge Constitution Bench was constituted to decide only the existence, constitutional basis, and general scope of the right to privacy.
- The bench did not decide the ultimate validity of the Aadhaar scheme on the facts; that challenge was left for later adjudication under the clarified constitutional framework.

## Issues

1. Whether the Constitution of India protects a fundamental right to privacy despite the absence of an express privacy clause.
2. Whether earlier Supreme Court precedents understood to deny a fundamental right to privacy were correctly decided.
3. If privacy is fundamental, what provisions of Part III (including Articles 14, 19, and 21) protect it and what interests it covers.
4. What general requirements must the state satisfy to justify restrictions on privacy.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court unanimously held that the right to privacy is a fundamental right under the Constitution of India.
- The Court held that privacy is protected as part of the right to life and personal liberty under Article 21 and is also connected to the freedoms and equality guarantees in Part III.
- To the extent prior decisions (including *M.P. Sharma* and *Kharak Singh*) were read to deny a fundamental right to privacy, they were overruled.
- The Court held that privacy is not absolute; state action interfering with privacy can be valid only when justified by constitutional standards, including proportionality.
- The Court answered the reference on the existence and status of the right to privacy and left the Aadhaar program’s specific constitutionality to be determined in subsequent proceedings.

## Legal Principles

- Privacy is a constitutionally protected fundamental right, arising from Article 21 and operating in connection with other Part III guarantees, including Articles 14 and 19.
- Fundamental rights are not isolated; a single government measure may implicate multiple rights and must be tested across the relevant constitutional protections.
- Privacy protects multiple interests, including bodily integrity, personal space and home, decisional autonomy in intimate and personal matters, and informational privacy relating to personal data.
- Privacy is closely linked to dignity and individual autonomy, including the ability to make personal choices without unjustified state interference.
- Interferences with privacy generally require a basis in law (legality), pursuit of a legitimate state aim, and proportionality between means and ends (including necessity and minimal impairment).
- The Court recognized the heightened privacy risks posed by modern data collection and processing and treated informational privacy as constitutionally significant.
- The Court relied on India’s constitutional structure and values, and drew support from comparative constitutional and human-rights materials, while grounding the right in Part III.
- Emergency-era reasoning that treated liberties as easily displaced was rejected as inconsistent with the Constitution’s protection of liberty and dignity.

## Conclusion

In *Puttaswamy v. Union of India*, the Supreme Court of India, sitting as a nine-judge bench, held that privacy is a fundamental right protected by Part III, rooted in Article 21 and connected to Articles 14 and 19. The Court overruled earlier contrary precedent to the extent it denied constitutional privacy, described privacy as covering bodily, decisional, and informational interests, and stated that any state intrusion must be authorized by law, serve a legitimate aim, and satisfy proportionality. The ruling resolved the constitutional question of privacy while leaving the Aadhaar program’s fact-specific validity for later proceedings.


Puttaswamy v. Union of India, 10 S.C.R. 569 (2017)