[Landmark Judgement] Kaushal Kishor V. State of U.P. (2023)

Published on:18 July 2023 at 13:30 IST

Court: Supreme Court 

Citation: Kaushal Kishor v. State of U.P. (2023)

Honourable Supreme Court of India has held that the fundamental The Right To Life to includes:

1. Livelihood
2. All those aspects of life which go to make a man’s life meaningful, complete and worth living;
3. Something more than mere survival or animal existence;
4. Right to live (and die) with human dignity;
5. Right to food, water, decent environment, medical care and shelter, etc.;
6. All that gives meaning to a man’s life, such as his tradition, culture, heritage and protection of that heritage in its full measure; and
7. The right to privacy. There are certain jurisdictions which have taken this right to include “the right to be forgotten” or the “right not to be remembered”.

91. The expression “personal liberty” appearing in Article 21 was held by this Court in A.K. Gopalan to mean freedom from physical restraint of a person by incarceration or otherwise. However, the understanding of the expression “personal liberty” got enlarged in Kharak Singh v. State of U.P. It was a case where a person who was originally charged for the offence of dacoity and later released for lack of evidence, was put under surveillance by the police, and his name included in the history-sheet under the U.P. Police Regulations.

As a result, he was required to make frequent visits to the police station. Sometimes the police made domiciliary visits at night to his house. They would knock at the door, disturb his sleep and ask to report to the police, whenever he went out of the village.

Though by a majority, the Constitution Bench held in Kharak Singh that the regulation permitting domiciliary visits is unconstitutional, the majority upheld the police surveillance on the ground that (at that time) right to privacy had not become part of the fundamental rights. But K. Subba Rao, J. speaking for himself and J.C. Shah, J. held that the concept of personal liberty in Article 21 is comprehensive enough to include privacy.

Drafted By Abhijit Mishra