Citizen justice: Celebrating the work of KS Puttaswamy

The journey of a nation is often the sum of collective struggles; yet, interspersed in this trajectory is the extraordinary contribution of some individuals whose enterprise and initiative move the needle of history on their own. India lost one such person, former Karnataka high court judge justice KS Puttaswamy, this week. The frail old man was already 86 when he approached the Supreme Court in 2012 to object to the mandatory enrollment under the unique identification programme, Aadhaar. He was 91 when the apex court in 2017 upheld his petition and declared privacy to be a fundamental right guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution.

The verdict by the nine-judge Constitution bench was a watershed in many ways. The bench, headed by then Chief Justice of India JS Khehar, not only overturned two previous decisions by an eight-judge and a six-judge bench but also weighed in on the infamous ADM Jabalpur case. The court bolstered freedom of expression and specified that citizens have the right against arbitrary, unregulated State surveillance. Equally important, the judgment placed the “individual” at the heart of the issue and also spurred transformation in a host of related cases such as the challenge against the then Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). This was instrumental in the overturning of the ban on homosexuality by the top court a year later. It was also at the core of the apex court’s reasoning in the Joseph Shine case, where a five-judge bench struck down section 497 of the IPC — which criminalised adultery — on the grounds that it violated Articles 14, 15 and 21 of the Constitution.

In his trademark unassuming manner, justice Puttaswamy embodied the courage and hope of Indian democracy, where, despite structural problems, the citizen’s faith in her country remains unshaken 77 years later. His belief in civil liberties and Constitutionalism should both inspire and humble, in equal measure.

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