Legal Analysis of Right To Privacy In India - lawcolloquy

The Constitution of India covers the right to privacy under Article 21, which is a requirement of the right to life and personal liberty. The scope of Article 21 is multidimensional according to the Constitution of India. Tort law, criminal law, and property law also recognize the right to privacy. However, our Indian judiciary, at present, has created a distinctive enclosure regarding privacy and one result of that is the right to privacy, which is now recognized as a fundamental right, which is intrinsic to Article 21 .

There are a plethora of cases on privacy, but none of the cases were in favor of considering privacy as a fundamental right, only after the approval of a landmark case, that is, K.S. Puttaswamy v Union of India in 2017, the right to privacy receives due recognition. The right to privacy is not only granted at the national level, but also at the international level under various conventions. The Right to Privacy, being a dynamic concept, is incorporated under the provisions of various laws and also encompasses various aspects. By studying privacy in depth, we will get to know the pros and cons of this Right to Privacy with certain reasonable restrictions, where the violation of this right is not considered a crime. In this article, we will discuss various dimensions regarding the Right to Privacy at the national and international level, reasonable restrictions, various legal cases and the latest development, which also includes the latest Bill on the Right to Privacy.

What is Right to Privacy?

According to Black's Law Dictionary, the right to privacy means "the right to be left alone"; the right of a person to be free from any unwarranted interference ”.
Recently, Judge D.Y. Chandrachud that annulled the principles developed in the Habeas Corpus case in the case of Judge K.S. Puttaswamy and ors. v. Union of India, which was developed as a landmark judgment in the history of India regarding the state of the right to privacy.

The terms privacy and the right to privacy cannot be easily conceptualized. To understand this more appropriately, privacy has been taken differently in different situations. Tom Gaiety said that "the right to privacy must include the inviolability of the body" and the integrity and intimacy of personal identity, including marital privacy.

Jude Cooley explained privacy law and stated that privacy is synonymous with the right to be left alone. Edward Shills has also explained that privacy is "a zero relationship between two or more people in the sense that there is no interaction or communication between them, if they so desire." The relationship between people or groups or between groups and people is neutral. Privacy is a value, a state or cultural condition that is directed towards the individual in collective self-realization varies from one society to another. The right to privacy as the right to be left alone therefore considered as a manifestation of "an inviolable personality", a center of freedom and liberty from which the human being had to be free from invasions. The right to privacy has justified the need to be left alone.

The basic thinking behind the preface to such a principle was to protect personal writings and personal productions and its scope extends not only to theft and physical misuse, but also to publication in any form. Therefore, because the continuous changes in technology and development caused the threat of the individual in public with his mouth open, many eminent jurists gave various suggestions and also suggested that the "right to stay alone" aspect be added in the law of privacy.

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