Data Protection In India

Disha Sivakumar, Symbiosis Law School, Hyderabad

In India, there existed no concept of Right to Privacy, in the case of Kharak Singh v State of Uttar Pradesh1, wherein a six judge bench held that right to privacy is not a fundamental right and hence the surveillance of the petitioner due to his background by the police was held valid. In another case of M P Sharma v Satish Chander2, an eight judge bench stated again that right to privacy was not a fundamental right, that India does not hold any right similar to the fourth amendment of the US constitution.

Later, the AADHAR Act came into existence, it was a central body collecting sensitive information of persons to issue them the identity of being an Indian citizen. In this process, the UIDAI(body administering and controlling AADHAR), collected biometric information, residential address, contact information and more. This information was stored in a single central server that did not have adequate safeguards in place. Retired Justice K S Puttaswamy filed a petition that the AADHAR Act was unconstitutional and one of the reasons was the violation of privacy and lack of adequate safeguards to the data collected, as any agency could access it. The Advocate General of India argued that right to privacy is not a fundamental right as held in previous cases. This was reversed by a landmark nine judge bench which over ruled the previous cases holding that right to privacy is a fundamental right under article 14, 19 and 213.