Indian Polity Quiz: Article 21: Right to Life and Personal Liberty

Article 21 says that no person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty except according to procedure established by law, an expression the Constituent Assembly borrowed from the Japanese Constitution.

A seven-judge bench held that a procedure which takes away life or personal liberty must be fair, just and reasonable, gave personal liberty the widest amplitude, and tied Articles 14, 19 and 21 together as the golden triangle.

It inserted Article 21A, which directs the State to provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age of six to fourteen years, recast Article 45 to cover early childhood care and education below six years, and added clause k to Article 51A, making it a fundamental duty…

The judgment also laid down that a law invading privacy must have legal backing, serve a legitimate State aim and be proportionate.

A Constitution Bench upheld the death penalty as consistent with Article 21 but held that it may be awarded only in the rarest of rare cases, where the alternative of life imprisonment is unquestionably foreclosed, and that courts must weigh aggravating against mitigating circumstances.

Article 359 lets the President suspend the right to move any court for the enforcement of fundamental rights while a national emergency is in force, but the 44th Amendment Act, 1978, passed after the experience of the 1975 Emergency, placed Article 20, on protection against conviction for offences, and Article…

The Court held that the right to life includes the right to livelihood, because no person can live without the means of living, and that pavement and slum dwellers could not be evicted without a fair hearing.

Article 21A, inserted by the 86th Amendment, 2002, says that the State shall provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age of six to fourteen years in such manner as the State may by law determine, and the Right to Education Act, 2009, works out that promise…

The petition, India's first reported public interest litigation, brought to light thousands of undertrial prisoners in Bihar jails who had been locked up longer than the maximum sentence for their alleged offence.

A Constitution Bench held that the right to die with dignity is part of the right to life under Article 21, and that an adult of sound mind may draw up an advance directive, popularly called a living will, refusing life support if he later becomes terminally ill or goes…