Case for harmonising the right to information with the right to informational privacy
There is a theoretical harmony between the right to information and the right to informational privacy which has not been translated into praxis in the Indian democratic polity, owing to a prioritisation of the right to privacy over that to information in recent jurisprudence.
Published on: 19 November 2022, 06:48 am
There is a theoretical harmony between the right to information and the right to informational privacy which has not been translated into praxis in the Indian democratic polity, owing to a prioritisation of the right to privacy over that to information in recent jurisprudence.
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THE right to informational privacy is a judicially recognised facet of the broader right to privacy, along with the right to decisional autonomy, and bodily and mental privacy by the landmark judgment of Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) & Anr. versus Union of India & Ors. (2017).
The right to informational privacy has been a contested and is an inadequately protected right in India, which exemplifies the fraught relationship between the citizen and the State from the vantage point of the Indian democratic discourse. The study of the right to informational privacy becomes an intriguing subject of study because it is a fundamental right that is routinely used by the State as a defence to encroach upon another fundamental right – the right to information ('RTI'). We argue this to be an artificial friction between the two rights as opposed to a theoretical disharmony.
Theoretical harmony
The authors' proposition is that RTI and the right to privacy aren't at loggerheads. We argue that the constituent elements of these two rights are not just harmonious with one another, but are also mutually reaffirming.
“RTI and the right to privacy aren't at loggerheads. The constituent elements of these two rights are not just harmonious with one another, but are also mutually reaffirming.