Who among the following filed the Writ Petition that led to the famous verdict of the Supreme Court of India recognising the Right to Privacy as a Fundamental Right?
- (a)Justice P. N. Bhagwati
- (b)Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman
- (c)Justice K. S. Puttaswamy
- (d)Justice Anil R. Dave
Correct — C, Justice K. S. Puttaswamy. The case is titled Justice K. S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) & Anr. v. Union of India, and the person a case is named after is the one who moved the court, not one of the judges who decided it. Puttaswamy was a retired judge of the Karnataka High Court who, in 2012, filed a writ petition challenging the Aadhaar scheme. The privacy question raised in that petition was referred upward and answered on 24 August 2017 by a nine-judge Bench, which held unanimously that the right to privacy is protected as an intrinsic part of the right to life and personal liberty under Article 21 and as part of the freedoms guaranteed by Part III.
- (a)Justice P. N. Bhagwati — A former Chief Justice of India associated with the growth of public interest litigation, but he was not the petitioner here and did not sit on the 2017 Bench — he had left the Supreme Court decades earlier.
- (b)Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman — The sharpest trap in the set, because he genuinely belongs to this case — he was one of the nine judges who decided it. Deciding a case is the opposite of filing it, so his name could never head the cause title.
- (d)Justice Anil R. Dave — A Supreme Court judge from 30 April 2010 to 18 November 2016, so he had already retired before the nine-judge Bench was constituted in 2017, and he was in any event not the petitioner.
Indian constitutional cases carry the name of the party who brought them, which is why 'Kesavananda Bharati', 'Maneka Gandhi' and 'Puttaswamy' are remembered as people rather than as issues. Puttaswamy arose out of a challenge to Aadhaar. Because the government argued that Indians had no fundamental right to privacy at all — relying on two old benches larger than any then hearing the matter — the narrow question had to be settled first by a Bench of nine.
The item is really testing whether you can separate the petitioner from the Bench. Three of the four names are judges of the Supreme Court, and one of them, Rohinton Fali Nariman, actually sat on this very Bench and wrote one of its opinions; a student who remembers only that 'Nariman was in the privacy case' will pick him. The safe route is to recall the full cause title. The 2017 judgment expressly overruled M. P. Sharma (1954) and Kharak Singh (1962) so far as they had said there was no such right, and it also disowned ADM Jabalpur (1976). Note that the Aadhaar scheme itself was not struck down — a separate Bench upheld most of the Aadhaar Act in 2018, and the privacy right has since fed into the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023.
- The petitioner, K. S. Puttaswamy, was a retired judge of the Karnataka High Court; the writ petition was filed in 2012 against the Aadhaar scheme.
- Judgment delivered 24 August 2017 by a nine-judge Bench: J. S. Khehar, J. Chelameswar, S. A. Bobde, R. K. Agrawal, R. F. Nariman, A. M. Sapre, D. Y. Chandrachud, S. K. Kaul and S. A. Nazeer.
- Privacy was located in Article 21 and, more broadly, in the freedoms of Part III, read with Articles 14 and 19.
- M. P. Sharma (1954) and Kharak Singh (1962) were overruled to the extent they held otherwise; ADM Jabalpur (1976) was also expressly disapproved.
- Choosing a judge who really was on the Bench, because the memory is 'he was in the privacy case'.
- Assuming the privacy verdict struck down Aadhaar — it did not; that came before a different Bench in 2018.
- Placing privacy only in Article 21, when the Court read it with Articles 14 and 19 as well.
Either as here — who filed it — or as the 2018 UPSC prelims item, which asked which constitutional provisions imply that privacy is intrinsic to life and personal liberty.
Right to Privacy is protected as an intrinsic part of Right to Life and Personal Liberty. Which of the following in the Constitution of India correctly and appropriately imply the above statement?
- (a) Article 14 and the provisions under the 42nd Amendment to the Constitution
- (b) Article 17 and the Directive Principles of State Policy in Part IV
- (c) Article 21 and the freedoms guaranteed in Part III
- (d) Article 24 and the provisions under the 44th Amendment to the Constitution
Answer(c) Article 21 and the freedoms guaranteed in Part III
The same judgment tested from the other side. UPSC asked where the Court located privacy; CDS asked who took it there. Learn the cause title and the constitutional address together.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The nine-judge Bench that recognised the right to privacy as a Fundamental Right delivered its judgment in which year?
- (a)2012
- (b)2015
- (c)2017
- (d)2018
Answer(c) 2017 — the judgment in Justice K. S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) v. Union of India was delivered on 24 August 2017.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Which of these earlier decisions was overruled by the 2017 privacy judgment to the extent that it held there is no fundamental right to privacy?
- (a)Kesavananda Bharati v. State of Kerala
- (b)Kharak Singh v. State of Uttar Pradesh
- (c)Indra Sawhney v. Union of India
- (d)S. R. Bommai v. Union of India
Answer(b) Kharak Singh v. State of Uttar Pradesh (1962) — overruled along with M. P. Sharma (1954) on this point.