The Puttaswamy Judgment is a landmark judgment of the Supreme Court of India, officially titled Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) & Anr. vs. Union of India & Ors.. Decided on August 24, 2017, the ratio of the nine-judge bench was that the right to privacy is protected as a fundamental right under the Constitution of India. The case originated from a challenge to the constitutional validity of the Aadhaar scheme, which involved the collection of biometric and demographic data. The judgment resolved the long-standing legal ambiguity by explicitly overruling earlier Supreme Court decisions, such as M.P. Sharma v. Satish Chandra (1954) and Kharak Singh v. State of Uttar Pradesh (1962), which had held that privacy was not a fundamental right.
The Court unanimously held that the right to privacy is an intrinsic part of the right to life and personal liberty guaranteed under Article 21 and is also protected across Article 14 and Article 19. The judgment established that this right is not absolute and can be restricted by the State only if the action satisfies a three-fold test: it must have a basis in legality (a valid law), pursue a legitimate state objective (necessity), and be proportional to that objective. This ruling fundamentally reshaped Indian constitutional law and paved the way for subsequent judgments, including the decriminalization of homosexuality in Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India (2018). It also underscored the need for a comprehensive data protection law in India. The core principle of privacy as a fundamental right remains unchanged, though the constitutional validity of the Aadhaar Act, 2016 was later upheld in part by a smaller bench.