K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2017)
Right to Privacy as the Constitutional Foundation
A nine-judge bench of the Supreme Court unanimously held in Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) v. Union of India (2017) that the right to privacy is a fundamental right, intrinsic to the right to life and personal liberty under Article 21 and to the freedoms guaranteed across Part III of the Constitution. This judgment overruled earlier decisions (M.P. Sharma, 1954, and Kharak Singh, 1963) that had denied privacy the status of a fundamental right.
- The Court adopted a three-fold test for any state (or, by extension, private) intrusion into personal autonomy: legality, legitimate state aim, and proportionality
- Personal autonomy over one's own identity, image, and likeness is treated by subsequent High Court rulings as flowing from this privacy jurisprudence, extending it into the personality-rights domain even where the alleged infringer is a private party rather than the state
- The 2017 ruling is also the constitutional basis cited in later personality-rights orders (including the 2022 blanket "in rem" John Doe order in Amitabh Bachchan v. Rajat Nagi) for protecting an individual's control over commercial use of their identity
● Tracked since March 26, 2026 · last seen July 14, 2026 · updates as the daily brief publishes
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