C. Article 21 — Life and Personal Liberty
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| Case | Year | Bench | Holding |
|---|---|---|---|
| Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India | 1978 | 7-judge | Overturned Gopalan; held Art. 21's "procedure established by law" must itself be right, just & fair (not arbitrary) — birth of the "golden triangle" reading of Arts. 14, 19 and 21 together. |
| Kharak Singh v. State of U.P. | 1962 | 6-judge | Struck down nightly domiciliary visits by police as violating Art. 21's protection of personal liberty, but controversially held there was no independent "right to privacy" in the Constitution — this holding was expressly overruled by Puttaswamy (2017). |
| M.P. Sharma v. Satish Chandra | 1954 | 8-judge | Held there was no Fundamental Right to privacy analogous to the U.S. Fourth Amendment while upholding a search-and-seizure power — also overruled by Puttaswamy (2017), which is why Puttaswamy names both this case and Kharak Singh as reversed. |
| Bandhua Mukti Morcha v. Union of India | 1984 | — | Held bonded labour violates Art. 21 dignity; treated an NGO's letter to the Court as a writ petition, pioneering "epistolary jurisdiction" and cementing PIL as a tool for the unrepresented. |
| Olga Tellis v. Bombay Municipal Corp. | 1985 | 5-judge | Held the right to livelihood is part of Art. 21 (an eviction that deprives a person of their livelihood must follow fair procedure) — though on facts, the regulated eviction of pavement/slum dwellers was still allowed to proceed. |
| Hussainara Khatoon v. State of Bihar | 1979 | — | Exposed thousands of undertrial prisoners in Bihar jails detained longer than the sentence they could ever receive; held speedy trial is part of Art. 21, and free legal aid must be provided to the poor — directly led to reforms in undertrial detention practice. |
| Sunil Batra v. Delhi Administration | 1978 | — | Held prisoners do not shed their Fundamental Rights at the prison gate — solitary confinement and bar fetters without due process/hearing violate Art. 21; extended Art. 21 protection inside jails. |
| Nandini Satpathy v. P.L. Dani | 1978 | — | Extended the protection against self-incrimination (Art. 20(3)) to the stage of police interrogation itself, not just formal trial — an accused cannot be forced to answer questions that may furnish a link in a chain of evidence against them. |
| D.K. Basu v. State of West Bengal | 1996/97 | — | Laid down binding, detailed guidelines on arrest and detention procedure (informing relatives, memo of arrest, medical exam, etc.) to curb custodial violence, as a direct extension of Art. 21. |
| Selvi v. State of Karnataka | 2010 | 3-judge | Held involuntary narco-analysis, polygraph and brain-mapping tests on an accused, without consent, violate Art. 20(3) (self-incrimination) and Art. 21 (personal liberty/mental privacy). |
| Vishaka v. State of Rajasthan | 1997 | — | Laid down the "Vishaka Guidelines" on workplace sexual harassment, drawing on CEDAW to fill a legislative vacuum; later substantially codified as the POSH Act, 2013. |
| Unni Krishnan, J.P. v. State of Andhra Pradesh | 1993 | 5-judge | Held the right to education (up to age 14) flows from Art. 21, read with the DPSPs — regulated private professional college fees/admissions; the education part was later constitutionalised directly as Art. 21A by the 86th Amendment (2002). |
| Mohini Jain v. State of Karnataka | 1992 | — | Struck down capitation fees for professional college admission and first held a right to education exists under Art. 21 — the case Unni Krishnan built on and partly qualified. |
| NALSA v. Union of India | 2014 | — | Held transgender persons have the right to self-identify their gender (as male, female or third gender) and directed they be treated as a socially/educationally backward class for reservation purposes. |
| Justice K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India (Privacy case) | 2017 | 9-judge | Unanimous — held the right to privacy is intrinsic to Art. 21 and Part III generally; expressly overruled the contrary holdings in M.P. Sharma (1954) and Kharak Singh (1962). |
| Common Cause v. Union of India | 2018 | 5-judge | Held the right to die with dignity is part of Art. 21; upheld passive euthanasia (withdrawal of life support in specific conditions) and the validity of advance medical directives ("living wills"), subject to safeguards. |
| Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India | 2018 | 5-judge | Unanimous — decriminalised consensual homosexual acts between adults, reading down Sec. 377 IPC to the extent it criminalised such conduct; expressly overruled Suresh Kumar Koushal (2013). |
| Joseph Shine v. Union of India | 2018 | 5-judge | Unanimous — struck down Sec. 497 IPC (adultery) as unconstitutional, holding it treated a married woman as her husband's property and was manifestly arbitrary and gender-discriminatory. |
| Puttaswamy (Aadhaar case) | 2018 | 5-judge | 4:1 — upheld Aadhaar's core validity (subject to reading down some provisions, e.g. restricting private-party mandatory linkage) as a reasonable, proportionate measure; controversially held the Aadhaar Act was validly passed as a Money Bill — a finding later doubted (see Flags). |
| Shafin Jahan v. Asokan K.M. ("Hadiya case") | 2018 | — | Held the right to choose a life partner/faith is part of individual autonomy protected under Art. 21; a High Court cannot annul an adult woman's marriage and act as her "super-guardian." |
Notes. Article 21 is the single largest "rights nursery" of the Constitution — nearly every unenumerated right recognised by the Court (privacy, dignity, livelihood, health, education, a clean environment, speedy trial, legal aid, shelter) has been read into the bare words "no person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty except according to procedure established by law." The turning point is Maneka Gandhi (1978); everything from Bandhua Mukti Morcha onward assumes its "golden triangle" logic. Note carefully which older cases Puttaswamy (2017) overruled by name — M.P. Sharma and Kharak Singh — because "which cases did Puttaswamy overrule" is a recurring objective-question format.
Mnemonic. This section is too large for one acronym, so hold it as two clusters plus a spine:
- The pre-Maneka spine (privacy false starts): "Sharma Kicked Kharak" — M.P. Sharma (1954) → Kharak Singh (1962) — both later overruled by name in Puttaswamy (2017). Picture Puttaswamy literally crossing out both names on a blackboard.
- The 1978 troika (liberty goes substantive): "Maneka's Batra Satisfied" — Maneka Gandhi → Sunil Batra → Nandini Satpathy, all decided in 1978, the year Art. 21 stopped being merely procedural.
- The 2018 sextet (one bumper year for personal autonomy): "Common sense, Navtej Shines, Aadhaar meets Hadiya" — Common Cause → Navtej Singh Johar → Joseph Shine → Puttaswamy-Aadhaar → Shafin Jahan (Hadiya), all 2018. Picture a wedding (Hadiya) where a bouncer checks Aadhaar cards at the door while Navtej shines a torch and Common Cause gives the toast on dying with dignity.
Practice Recall. Before reading on: which two older cases did Puttaswamy (2017) overrule by name, and what had each wrongly held?
Answer: M.P. Sharma (1954) — no Fourth-Amendment-style privacy right; and Kharak Singh (1962) — struck down domiciliary visits but denied any independent right to privacy. Puttaswamy (2017) held privacy is intrinsic to Art. 21 and overruled both.
Practice Recall. Before reading on: name all five Article 21-adjacent personal-autonomy judgments delivered in 2018.
Answer: Common Cause (passive euthanasia/living wills), Navtej Singh Johar (decriminalised Sec. 377), Joseph Shine (struck down adultery), Puttaswamy-Aadhaar (upheld Aadhaar, 4:1), Shafin Jahan/Hadiya (autonomy to choose a partner). (Sabarimala, in Section H, is the sixth major 2018 liberty ruling if you count personal-law cases too.)