Top court’s landmark privacy ruling could impact India’s roll-out of world’s largest biometric ID card programme
The decision is being viewed as a setback to the government’s efforts to make the ID card compulsory
India’s Supreme Court ruled Thursday that citizens have a constitutional right to privacy, a landmark decision that could jeopardise a government programme with biometric data on over a billion people.
Privacy is not explicitly mentioned in the Indian constitution and the government has argued that the country’s 1.25 billion people have no absolute right to it.
But the top court said the right to privacy was enshrined in the constitution, a ruling which civil liberties campaigners hailed as a milestone.
“The right of privacy is a fundamental right,” the nine judges deciding the case said in a unanimous ruling.
“It is a right which protects the inner sphere of the individual from interference from both State and non-State actors and allows the individuals to make autonomous life choices.”
The Supreme Court set up a special bench to rule on the issue after a legal challenge to the government’s Aadhaar biometric programme, which has recorded the fingerprints and iris scans of more than one billion Indians.