Former Karnataka High Court judge and the key architect of the right to privacy in India, Justice KS Puttaswamy, passed away on Monday, October 28. The 98-year-old, who was suffering from age-related ailments, breathed his last in his residence in Bengaluru.
Puttaswamy was born in 1926 in a village near Bengaluru and began his career as an advocate in the year 1952, at the old Mysore high court. He later became a senior government advocate and was elevated as a judge of the Karnataka High Court in 1977, where he served until his retirement in 1986. After his retirement, he served as the vice chairperson of the Central Administrative Tribunal in Bengaluru.
In 2012, when he was 86 years old, Justice Puttaswamy challenged the Constitutional validity of the Aadhaar scheme, which was introduced by the Union government merely based on an executive order. Though the court did not strike down the scheme, the litigation led to declaring privacy as a fundamental right under Article 21 of the Constitution. The case law, ‘Justice KS Puttaswamy (Retd) vs Union Of India’, is widely cited as a pivotal document which defines the citizen’s right to privacy in the country.