Introduction
The challenge before SC centres on Section 44(3) of the DPDP Act, which amends Section 8(1)(j) of the Right to Information Act. While Section 8(1)(j) previously permitted disclosure of personal information in cases of larger public interest, the amendment under the DPDP Act now effectively bars such disclosure.
We are moving away from “discretionary Privacy” towards “Absolute Privacy.” The challenge for the judiciary is to ensure that while we protect the individual from the “Glass House” of the internet, we don’t accidentally build a “Brick Wall” that hides the machinery of the State.
Genesis
The DPDPA is the statutory child of the Puttaswamy verdict, which elevated privacy to a Fundamental Right under Article 21, declaring the “Digital Self” as sacrosanct as the physical body. This judicial mandate shifted data from a bureaucratic asset to an extension of human dignity.
Yet, this creates a sharp existential crisis to the effect that the RTI prioritizes the Collective Fundamental Right to transparency, while the DPDPA guards the Individual Fundamental Right to autonomy.
We are now locked in a zero-sum game of constitutional hierarchy wherein the clash between the public’s right to know and the individual’s right to hide, whose fundamental right takes precedence?
The logic
You cannot have a robust privacy regime if another law provides a standing invitation to break it. But you cannot have a democracy if “privacy” becomes a synonym for “secrecy.”
My take is that the Doctrine of Harmonious Construction in terms of Section 38 of DPDPA will prevail in the first place. The goal is a constitutional synthesis where Accountability and Autonomy coexist rather than cancel each other out.
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