Right to life above right to privacy, says Attorney General

New Delhi: The Centre on Wednesday asserted in the Supreme Court that the concept of privacy is a notional one and not a fundamental right enshrined in the Constitution.

Attorney General K.K. Venugopal, making this submission before a nine-judge Constitution Bench comprising the Chief Justice J.S. Khehar and Justices J. Chelameswar, S.A. Bobde, R.K. Agrawal, Rohinton Nariman, A.M. Sapre, D.Y. Chandrachud, Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Abdul Nazeer said privacy is too vague to qualify as a fundamental right. 

The bench is examining whether right to privacy is a fundamental right or not as two judgments of the apex court in 1954 and 1962 had held that it is not a fundamental right.

The AG argued that there could be no independent right called right to privacy, and that privacy is only a sociological notion, not a legal concept. “Every aspect of it does not qualify as a fundamental right, as privacy also includes the subtext of liberty. No need to recognise privacy as an independent right. Defining the contours of privacy is not possible. Privacy is as good a notion as pursuit of happiness.”

He also argued that right to life “transcends” right to privacy. The AG said, “If privacy were to be declared a fundamental right, then it can be a qualified right.” 

The Attorney General  asked judges to state that only some aspects of privacy are fundamental, not all, and it is a limited fundamental right that can be taken away in legitimate state interest. 

He said that in developing countries something as amorphous as privacy could not be a fundamental right, that other fundamental rights such as food, clothing, shelter etc. override the right to privacy.

The Attorney General  made it clear that Right to Privacy cannot fall in the bracket of fundamental rights as there are binding decisions of larger benches that it is only a common law right evolved through judicial pronouncements.