Document Fragment View

Matching Fragments

11. Smt. Jayna Kothari, learned Senior Advocate appearing for some of the petitioners, banking upon the decisions of the Apex Court in the Triple Talaq Case (infra) and other cases supported other's contention of manifest arbitrariness; she also pressed into service the decision of Apex Court in Privacy Case (infra) to buttress her argument that the Act is bad for bruising the Right to Privacy of candidates which includes Right to choice & the freedom to choose either to work or not, and the liberty to choose the nature of work that fall within the domain of private decision making.

29. Impugned Act Vs. Right to Privacy:

(i) The contention of Smt. Jayna Kothari, learned Sr Advocate that the impugned Act enacting a compulsion render public service is violative of citizen's Fundamental Right to Privacy vide Puttaswamy Vs. UOI, (2017) 10 SCC 1, is bit difficult to sustain; true it is, in the said case, the Apex Court broadly explained and illustrated what "privacy" is, although, an exhaustive enumeration or catalogue of entitlements or interests comprised in right to privacy is left undetermined; Privacy includes at its core, the preservation of personal intimacies, sanctity of family life, marriage, procreation, home and sexual orientation.
"Privacy also connotes right to be left alone"; Privacy safeguards individual autonomy and recognizes ability of individual to control vital aspects of his or her life. Personal choices governing way of life are intrinsic to privacy; learned Sr. Counsel Kothari specifically banks upon the observations of the Apex Court at paragraphs 373 & 424, in Puttaswamy Case supra, which are as under:
1318
"Similarly, the freedom to choose either to work or not and the freedom to choose the nature of the work are areas of private decision making process" (para 373) "To exercise one's right to privacy is to choose and specify on two levels. It is to choose which of the various activities that are taken in by the general residue of liberty available to her she would like to perform, and to specify whom to include in one's circle when performing them. It is also autonomy in the negative, and takes in the choice and specification of which activities not to perform and which persons to exclude from one's circle. Exercising privacy is the signaling of one's intent to these specified others

(ii) The Right to Privacy being of nascent origin is gathered inter alia from Part III read with Preamble of the Constitution; if Part III 'Explicit Rights' can be regulated & restricted by law, albeit on certain permissible grounds, it hardly needs to be stated that the right to privacy which is derived therefrom cannot claim immunity from such regulation and restriction; in the very same decision, the Apex Court has clarified that like other rights which form part of fundamental freedoms protected by Part III including right to live and personal liberty under Article 21, privacy is not an absolute right; therefore, what applies to the Fundamental Rights in respect of regulation/restriction a priori applies to this right, and in the case of conflict, it has to yield to the larger public interest for achieving which the impugned Act is designed; the Apex Court in the second K.S. Puttaswamy (Adhaar) Vs. UOI, 2019 (1) SCC 1 has held that the Right to Privacy can be abridged by a just, fair & reasonable law as any other Fundamental Rights can be; such abridgment has to fulfill the test of proportionality i.e., it should be proportionate to the need for such interference; in addition to this, the law in question must also provide procedural guarantees against abuse of such interference; abridgment has to be co-terminus with true requirement; going by this standard, it is difficult to countenance petitioners' argument that the impugned Act is constitutionally invalid, especially when State's power to compel citizens to render public service is sanctioned under Article 23(1) of the Constitution.