Iconic jurist who set ball rolling on privacy rights

That nine-judge Constitution bench verdict, widely considered among the most consequential in Indian legal history, would go on to influence decisions in matters as varied as the challenge to India’s colonial-era ban on homosexuality and the criminalisation of adultery.

Widely celebrated as a civil rights icon, Puttaswamy died at his Bengaluru residence on Monday. He was 98.

Born on February 6, 1926, Puttaswamy was educated in Maharaja’s College in then Mysore and went on to study law in Government Law College , Bengaluru.

He started practising as a lawyer in 1951 and was appointed as a judge in the Karnataka high court in 1977.

There, he decided that the Centre can impose capital gains tax on the sale of agriculture land and provided relief to petitioners in central sales tax law, quashing arbitrary decisions by officials. He retired from the high court in 1986 and continued his service in the administrative sector, becoming the first vice-chairman of the Central Administrative Tribunal’s Bengaluru bench in September 1986.

In November 1989, he was appointed the first chairman of the Andhra Pradesh Administrative Tribunal, constituted under the Uniform Administrative Tribunals Act. On January 26 1994, then Andhra Pradesh chief minister Kotla Vijayabhaskara Reddy constituted the State Backward Classes Commission under Puttaswamy’s chairmanship.

In 2012, Puttaswamy decided to come out of retirement to challenge the compulsory enrollment of people under Aadhaar, a unique 12-digit identification number that was first introduced in 2009, saying it violated the fundamental right to privacy. Other petitioners in the case were the first chairperson of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, Shanta Sinha, activist Aruna Roy and activist and former soldier Sudhir G Vombatkere.

The petition prompted the apex court to set up the nine-judge bench to look into the correctness of past judgments, including some by an eight-judge and a six-judge bench, which had ruled that privacy was not a fundamental right.

On 24 August, 2017, the bench -- comprising then Chief Justice of India JS Khehar, along with justices J. Chelameswar, SA Bobde, RK Agrawal, RF Nariman, AM Sapre, DY Chandrachud, SK Kaul and S Abdul Nazeer -- unanimously held that “the right to privacy is protected as an intrinsic part of the right to life and personal liberty under Article 21 of the Constitution”.

“Let the right of privacy, an inherent right, be unequivocally a fundamental right embedded in part-III of the Constitution of India, but subject to the restrictions specified, relatable to that part. This is the call of today. The old order changeth, yielding place to new,” the court said.

By recognising privacy as an independently enforceable right, the court bolstered freedom of expression and specified that citizens have the right against arbitrary, unregulated State surveillance. It gave supremacy to the individual over information relating to their personhood and recognised privacy as intrinsic to dignity, liberty and autonomy, albeit with reasonable restrictions.

Puttaswamy termed the judgement as “landmark”.

“I am completely vindicated by the decision,” he said at the time, highlighting his stance that Aadhaar should be voluntary. “My contention had always been that Aadhaar enrolment can be made voluntary, in which case I would not have petitioned.”

“My contention was the collection of biometric data of all citizens by a private agency, without any suitable legislation to protect this data. At the same time, identity could be availed by illegal immigrants.”

The verdict also struck down the 1976 ADM Jabalpur ruling, which at the time held that liberty was a regulated freedom and could be set aside in certain circumstances.

Widely held as among India’s most important civil liberties victories, the judgment not only placed the ‘individual’ at the heart of the issue but also spurred transformation in a host of related cases such as the challenge against the then Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code.

“Sexual orientation is an essential attribute of privacy. Discrimination against an individual based on sexual orientation is deeply offensive to an individual’s dignity and self-worth. Equality demands that the sexual orientation of each individual in society must be protected on an even platform. The right to privacy and the protection of sexual orientation lie at the core of the fundamental rights guaranteed by Articles 14, 15, and 21 of the Constitution,” the court held.

This was instrumental in the overturning of Section 377 a year later, on September 6, 2018.

It was also at the core of the court’s reasoning in the Joseph Shine case, where a five-judge bench struck down section 497 of the IPC -- which criminalised adultery -- on the grounds that it violated Articles 14, 15 and 21 of the Constitution.

Such was the verdict’s footprint and importance that then attorney general KK Venugopal, who argued against overturning past judgments that left privacy outside fundamental protections, called it “extraordinary”.

“We have now an extraordinary judgement which has upheld the right to privacy as a major fundamental right which, if we look into the newspapers or TV, has been welcomed by every single person in this country. And that, I think, is one of the greatest things that the Supreme Court of India has done,” he said at the time.

Puttaswamy also was a strong votary of construction of dams to provide irrigation facility to farmers, though he preferred smaller dams than the bigger ones. “With all due respects, the interference by our Supreme Court in the Narmada Dam matter is not legally sound and justified,” he once wrote in an opinion piece. He also spoke against indiscriminate construction in Bengaluru at the cost of its green cover.

Kiran Jonnalagadda, a digital rights activist, called Puttaswamy’s work crucial.

“The (privacy) case was crucial because he saw concerns regarding privacy well before others. He saw the problems that could arise and approached the court.”