New Delhi, Aug 5
The Centre on Wednesday reiterated its stand that privacy was not a
fundamental right, while contesting a bunch of petitions challenging the
constitutional validity of the Aadhaar scheme on the ground of
violation of citizens' right to privacy.
Addressing the court for
referring the matter to a constitution bench in the context whether
privacy was part of the right to liberty and thus a fundamental right,
Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi told the apex court bench of Justices J.
Chelameswar, S.A. Bobde and C. Nagappan that one could not telescope
privacy in any of the fundamental rights.
Rohatgi said the apex
court had held against the midnight knocks by police on the pretext of
search and seizures by reading privacy in Article 21 of the constitution
that guaranteed protection of life and personal liberty but not in the
case of picketing by police outside the residence of a suspect or a
history-sheeter or putting people's movement under surveillance.
Telling
the court that the right to privacy does not reside in Article 21,
Rohatgi said the apex court had long ago, first by an eight-judge bench
and subsequently six- judge bench, held that "privacy was not a
fundamental right".
It was later from the mid-seventies that
smaller benches of the apex court, in a spate of judgments, held that
the right to privacy was a fundamental right by reading it in Article
21.
However, the attorney general said this would not eclipse the
view held by eight- and six-judge benches that privacy was not a
fundamental right.
The apex court bench is hearing rival
arguments on the AG's submission that if it (court) had to hear the
batch of petitions challenging the Aadhaar scheme on the grounds of its
being violative of the privacy of the people opting for it, then the
matter should be referred to a five-judge bench.
He had urged the
court to refer the matter to the five-judge bench so that there was an
authoritative pronouncement on the status of privacy as a right, in the
light of earlier pronouncements of the apex court.
Assailing the
arguments put forth by the petitioners challenging the validity of
Aadhaar scheme by relying on various references in the earlier
judgments, the AG said that one could not interpret the references to
one's own convenience.
He said that a judgment could only be seen in the context of the questions raised and answered by it.
However,
the petitioners have said that Aadhaar scheme was going to be
implemented on the strength of an executive order and the same need not
be referred to a five-judge bench and could be decided by the three
judges hearing the matter.
Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (retd), who
had moved the court in 2012, has contended that the entire Aadhaar
scheme was "unconstitutional" as the biometric data collected under it
was an incursion and transgression of individual privacy. Later, several
others moved the court contesting the Aadhaar scheme.
