New Delhi: In a few hours from now, a nine-judge Supreme Court (SC) bench will pronounce their landmark verdict on whether an individual's privacy is a fundamental right, protected by the constitution. The judgement, expected to affect the lives of 134 crore Indians, will also have a bearing on challenges to WhatsApp's new privacy policy and validity of Aadhaar scheme.
The ruling is expected to be delivered at 10.30 am.
According to SC sources, six judgements could be issued by the bench today.
The nine-judge constitution bench, headed by Chief Justice of India JS Khehar, is revisited a 55-year-old SC verdict that states privacy is not a basic right for citizens.
Besides CJI Khehar, the other judges of the nine-judge bench are Justices J Chelameswar, SA Bobde, RK Agrawal, RF Nariman, AM Sapre, DY Chandrachud, SK Kaul and S Abdul Nazeer.
The top court reserved its verdict had on August 2 after hearing marathon arguments for six days over a period of three weeks.
The petitioners have raised concern over possible misuse of personal information in public domain. They also argued that enforcing the use of Aadhaar numbers amounts to an infringement of privacy.
The Supreme Court, however, said that the concept of privacy in the technological era is a "losing battle". The government and several other bodies argued that the constitution does not guarantee individual privacy as an inalienable fundamental right.
The Unique Identification Authority of India too said that privacy was not a fundamental right and there were sufficient safeguards to protect data collected from the people - their iris scan and finger prints.
