Supreme Court passed 1975 ruling months before Emergency

NEW DELHI: A nine-judge Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice J S Khehar was pleasantly surprised to find that the SC had delivered a verdict, believed for the last 40 years to be the foundation of privacy as fundamental right, in the year

Emergency

was proclaimed.

The nine-judge bench wanted to know the date of the judgment. When senior advocate C A Sundaram said `Govind vs Madhya Pradesh' judgment, erroneously believed to be the first one to rule privacy as a fundamental right, was delivered on March 18, 1975, the bench broke into a smile. For, Emergency was declared three months later on June 25, 1975. Justice

J Chelameswar

said he had pointed this out, as head of a three-judge bench, during the hearing on petitions challenging Aadhaar.

The surprise was understandable as the Emergency period, from 1975 to 1977, saw brutal abuse of fundamental rights of citizens and arrest and incarceration of political leaders without remedy. When the aggrieved moved high courts, some of them gave relief under the writ of habeas corpus.

Later, in 1976, the SC, in ADM Jabalpur case, succumbed to the powers that be and gave a blot of a ruling that all rights, including right to life, remained suspended during Emergency . It virtually accepted then attorney general Niren De's constitutionally flawed argument that during Emergency, even if a triggerhappy policeman shot a citizen, there was no constitutional remedy available to the victim's kin.