Khushi Bajpai
Published on: September 1, 2022 at 21:30 IST
Ratan Tata, then the head of the Tata group and now its Chairman Emeritus, filed a petition with the Supreme Court twelve years ago asking for protection of his Right to Privacy following the release of private conversations on the Radia Tapes.
On Thursday, the Supreme Court will take up the petition for a new hearing.
The problems surrounding the Right to Privacy in relation to the government, the Right to Privacy in relation to the media, and the Right to Information were crystallised by the SC bench at the last meaningful hearing on April 29, 2014.
After hearing all three of the concerns, the bench said, “The issues with regard to the criminality or illegality in awarding various contracts to the private parties which has appeared in the recorded discussion between various individuals will be taken up.”
The bench, a nine-judge bench of the SC in this case, had ruled that Right to Privacy is a Fundamental Right of Citizens.
On the basis of a complaint received by the Finance Ministry, the I-T department had tapped the telephones of Radia, a corporate lobbyist who has now shut down her business.
Tata’s petition, countered by another filed by an NGO Centre for Public Interest Litigation seeking making public the entire radia tapes except purely private conversations, put the case at the intersection of the duelling consideration of the Nation’s Security and Citizens’ Right to Privacy.