Puttaswamy: Privacy Is a Fundamental Right

Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) v. Union of India and Ors., (2017) 10 SCC 1.
Bench: Chief Justice J.S. Khehar, Justice J. Chelameswar, Justice S.A. Bobde, Justice R.K. Agrawal, Justice R.F. Nariman, Justice A.M. Sapre, Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, Justice S.K. Kaul, Justice S. Abdul Nazeer.
Date of judgment: 24 August 2017.

A nine-judge Bench was constituted to resolve a question that had hovered over Indian constitutional law for decades: is there a fundamental right to privacy? Earlier Benches had given conflicting answers. M.P. Sharma (1954) and Kharak Singh (1963) suggested there was no such right. Later cases — Gobind v. State of M.P. (1975), R. Rajagopal v. State of Tamil Nadu (1994), PUCL v. Union of India (1997) — implied there was.

The immediate trigger was the challenge to the Aadhaar scheme. But the reference question was broader: does the Constitution recognise a fundamental right to privacy at all?

All nine judges agreed that privacy is a fundamental right inhering in Part III of the Constitution — principally Article 21 (life and personal liberty), but also traceable to Articles 14 (equality) and 19 (freedoms). M.P. Sharma and Kharak Singh, to the extent they held otherwise, were overruled.

The Court laid down a proportionality test for any State action that infringes privacy:

1. Legality — the action must be backed by a valid law.
2. Legitimate aim — the State must pursue a goal that justifies the infringement.
3. Proportionality — the means adopted must be rationally connected to the aim and must be the least restrictive alternative.

Several opinions specifically identified informational privacy — a person's right to control the collection, use, and dissemination of personal information — as a distinct facet of the broader right. This facet directly frames the Section 8(1)(j) balancing in the RTI Act.

• Section 8(1)(j) is now read with constitutional weight. Denial on privacy grounds has a stronger foundation than before.
• Section 8(2) public-interest override is constrained. The override must pass the Puttaswamy proportionality test — a significant public interest, proportionate to the privacy harm.
• 14 November 2025 DPDP amendment. The substituted text of Section 8(1)(j) aligns the RTI exemption with the DPDP Act, 2023 definitions — which themselves were drafted with Puttaswamy in mind. See DPDP Rules, 2025: the amendment and PIO reply after DPDP Rules, 2025.

Puttaswamy sits uneasily beside the transparency jurisprudence of CBSE v. Aditya Bandopadhyay (2011), Girish Ramchandra Deshpande (2013), and CPIO SC v. Subhash Chandra Agarwal (2020). The resolution is case-specific: each disclosure must be tested against the three-part proportionality framework. Routine service-record disclosures (designation, pay scale, postings) easily clear the test; disclosures of medical records, private financial data, or intimate relationships of private persons do not.

• The RTI Act, 2005 — current text. Section 8(1)(j).
• Privacy under RTI.
• Privacy of public servants.
• Public interest.
• DPDP Rules, 2025 — the amendment.
• Girish Ramchandra Deshpande (2013) — ACRs and property returns.
• Case law library.

1. Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) v. Union of India and Ors., (2017) 10 SCC 1.
2. Constitution of India, Articles 14, 19, 21.
3. The Right to Information Act, 2005, Sections 8(1)(j) and 8(2).
4. The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, Section 44(3).

Last reviewed on: 20 April 2026 — RTI Wiki editorial team.