By this ruling, the Supreme Court has not only dismissed the government’s anti-people argument but also removed the contradictions and blots of its earlier judgments. It overruled two of its previous verdicts—given in the M.P. Sharma case of 1958 and the Kharak Singh case of 1961—which had said the right to privacy was not protected under the Indian Constitution. And it has done so in powerful and memorable words—Justice Chelameswar says, ‘The right to privacy consists of repose, sanctuary and intimate decisions’; Justice Chandrachud writes that ‘development consists of the expansion of
...more
