The Right To Privacy Judgment Is A Year Old, But Not A Year Wiser

August 24 marks the first anniversary of the Supreme Court’s seminal judgment on the right to privacy in Justice KS Puttaswamy v. Union of India, which was a watershed moment in Indian fundamental rights jurisprudence. However, the developments since its pronouncement have only battered the tall principles laid out by the Constitution Bench instead of making these rights stronger, or even implementing them in letter and spirit—citizens are still being forced to opt for Aadhaar and the Justice Srikrishna Committee report was practically an attempt at diluting the principles so gleefully celebrated after the Puttaswamy judgement, while the judgment on Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code is being eagerly awaited. We have Section 377: A colonial Burden Perhaps the most awaited impact of the right to privacy judgment has been on Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, the British-era law that criminalizes “carnal intercourse against the order of nature”, excluding same-sex relations between adults in private and hence, effectively decriminalizing homosexuality. To give a quick recap, the provision was read down in 2009 by the Delhi High Court, which decriminalised consensual sex between adults from the purview of the provision, asserting that the provision “grossly violates right to privacy and liberty embodied in Article 21 insofar as it criminalises consensual acts between adults in private.” However, this judgment was overturned in 2013 by the Supreme Court, which ruled that Section 377 would apply to same-sex couples irrespective of age and consent, in a major setback to civil rights in general and LGBTQ rights in particular.