75 Important Judgments Of The Supreme Court: Part II | Celebrating 75 Years of India's Supreme Court

In Part II of the 75 landmark judgments of the Supreme Court, we look at another set of 25 judgments relating to Article 21 including unenumerated rights. Due process and interrelatedness of rightsDue process guarantees not included in Article 21 In 1950, in A.K. Gopalan v The State of Madras, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutional validity of the Prevention Detention Act, 1950, except for Section 14 which prescribed restrictions as to the disclosure of grounds of detention before the court. The judgment became a cause celebre for holding that Article 21's 'procedure established by law' does not include 'due process' guarantees and that Article 19 had no application in the case of prevention detention.The court had held that 'law' in the expression procedure established by law meant the State-made law and did not embody the principles of natural justice in an abstract sense.Fundamental rights as complete code theory In this case, an argument was put forth by the then Attorney General of India that for the matters of prevention detention, Article 22 was a complete code. Therefore, it should not fall within the purview of Article 21. Although the court rejected the 'complete code' theory and held that Article 22 is supplemented by Article 21, in R.C. Cooper v. UOI (1970), the court erroneously assumed otherwise. It therefore went on to hold that the fundamental right guarantees delimit the protection of those rights in their allotted fields: they do not -attempt to enunciate distinct rights.It held: “In our judgment, the assumption in A. K. Gopalan's case(1) that certain articles in the Constitution exclusively deal with specific matters and in determining whether there is infringement of the individual's guaranteed rights, the object and the form of the State action alone need be considered, and effect of the laws on fundamental rights of the individuals, in general, will be Ignored cannot be accepted as correct.”Right to move the court for enforcement of fundamental rights during emergency During this, the emergency was proclaimed in 1975 and through a Presidential Order, the right to move the court to challenge the enforcement of fundamental rights was suspended. In A.D.M. Jabalpur v. Shivkant Shukla (1976), some petitioners moved a writ of habeas corpus challenging detention orders under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act, 1971. However, through the majority, the Supreme Court held that Article 21 was the 'sole repository' of the right to life and personal liberty and any writ of habeas corpus for enforcement of Article 21 was barred by the Presidential Order.However, the lone dissenter, Justice H.R. Khanna held that Article 21 was not the 'sole repository' of the right to life and personal liberty. It held: “Article 21 incorporates an essential aspect of that principle and makes it part of the fundamental rights guaranteed in Part III of the Constitution. It does not, however, follow from the above that if Article 21 had not been drafted and inserted in Part III, in that event it would have been permissible for the State to deprive a person of his life or liberty without the authority of law.”This minority opinion went on to become the majority opinion of Justice K.S. Puttaswamy v. UOI (2017)recognising the right to privacy as a fundamental right. In the 44th Amendment, 1978 it was stated that Articles 20 and 21 cannot be suspended during Emergency.Procedure established by law under Article 21 cannot be arbitrary, Golden triangle In Maneka Gandhi, v., Union, of India (1978), the judgment of A.K. Gopalan was revisited in terms of the due process requirement under Article 21. While deciding the issue of whether the right to go abroad was a part of the expression “personal liberty”, the court answering in the affirmative also held that the 'procedure' under Article 21 has to be fair, just and reasonable, not fanciful, oppressive or arbitrary. It held that Article 21 is of the widest amplitude.This judgment is also significant for the interrelation between Articles 14, 19 and 21, which weave a "pattern of guarantees on the basic structure of human rights" and impose negative obligations on the State not to encroach on individual liberty in its various dimensions. The Court observed: "The law must, therefore, now be taken to be well settled that article 21 does not exclude article 19 and that even if there is a law prescribing a procedure for depriving a person of 'personal liberty' and there is consequently no infringement of the fundamental right conferred by article 21, such law, in so far as it abridges or takes away any fundamental right under article 19 would have to meet the challenge of that article."Through this, the interrelation between Articles 14, 19 and 21 was referred to as the 'Golden Triangle'.Right to privacyIn M.P. Sharma and Others v. Satish Chandra & Ors (1954), and Kharak Singh v. State of Uttar Pradesh (1964) were some of the earlier judgments where the right to privacy as ...

75 Important Judgments Of The Supreme Court: Part II | Celebrating 75 Years of India's Supreme Court

Gursimran Kaur Bakshi

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