Article 21: Right to Life, Case Laws and Exam Facts

Article 21 is the shortest of the fundamental rights and by far the widest. It reads: no person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty except according to procedure established by law. From these few words the Supreme Court has drawn a long list of rights that the Constitution never spells out, among them privacy, education, livelihood, shelter, a clean environment, a speedy trial and death with dignity. That is why Article 21 is the single most examined article of the Constitution in SSC, Railway, State and UPSC papers.

The text and who can claim it

Article 21 sits in Part III of the Constitution, in the cluster on the right to freedom that runs from Article 19 to Article 22. It uses the word person and not citizen, so a foreigner on Indian soil can claim it as fully as a citizen can. It is a limitation on the State, and it is enforced by writ petitions under Article 32 in the Supreme Court and Article 226 in a High Court.

The Constituent Assembly deliberately chose the expression procedure established by law, borrowed from the Japanese Constitution, instead of the American due process of law. The choice came after B. N. Rau met Justice Felix Frankfurter in the United States, who warned that due process gives judges a vast power to strike down laws. Examiners love this contrast, because the Supreme Court later reached almost the same result by reading fairness into the word procedure.

From A. K. Gopalan to Maneka Gandhi

In A. K. Gopalan versus State of Madras, 1950, the Court took a narrow view. Personal liberty meant only freedom from physical restraint, Articles 19 and 21 were treated as watertight compartments, and any law duly passed by a legislature satisfied the words procedure established by law.

In Maneka Gandhi versus Union of India, 1978, decided after her passport was impounded without reasons, a seven-judge bench changed the article forever. The procedure must be fair, just and reasonable, not fanciful, oppressive or arbitrary. Personal liberty was given the widest amplitude and covers the right to travel abroad, first recognised in Satwant Singh Sawhney versus D. Ramarathnam, 1967. Articles 14, 19 and 21 were held to be linked, and are called the golden triangle of the Constitution, because a law touching life or liberty must also survive the tests of equality and reasonableness.

Rights read into Article 21

Privacy and the three-fold test

In K. S. Puttaswamy versus Union of India, 2017, a bench of nine judges held unanimously that the right to privacy is intrinsic to life and personal liberty under Article 21 and runs through the whole of Part III. It overruled the contrary holdings in M. P. Sharma, 1954, and Kharak Singh, 1962. A law that invades privacy must clear a three-fold test: it must have the backing of law, it must serve a legitimate aim of the State, and the means must be proportionate to that aim. The same judgment also buried the majority view in ADM Jabalpur versus Shivkant Shukla, 1976, which had said that Article 21 was the sole repository of the right to life and could be taken away during an Emergency.

Article 21A and the right to education

The Court first read education into Article 21 in Mohini Jain, 1992, and Unni Krishnan, 1993. Parliament then passed the 86th Constitutional Amendment in 2002, which inserted Article 21A: the State shall provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age of six to fourteen years. The same amendment recast Article 45 to speak of early childhood care and education for children below six years, and added Article 51A, clause k, making it a fundamental duty of a parent or guardian to provide education. The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, which gives effect to Article 21A, came into force on 1 April 2010.

Death sentence, prisoners and Emergency

The death penalty itself has been upheld as constitutional, in Jagmohan Singh versus State of Uttar Pradesh, 1973, and again in Bachan Singh versus State of Punjab, 1980, where the Court confined it to the rarest of rare cases; Machhi Singh versus State of Punjab, 1983, listed the factors that make a case rarest of rare. In Mithu versus State of Punjab, 1983, the Court struck down Section 303 of the Indian Penal Code, which made death the only sentence for a life convict who commits murder, because it left no room for a fair hearing on sentence. Article 21 also protects prisoners: solitary confinement, bar fetters and degrading treatment have all been curbed. Finally, Article 359 allows the President to suspend the right to move the courts for fundamental rights during a national emergency, but after the 44th Amendment, 1978, Articles 20 and 21 can never be suspended, so the right to life survives even an Emergency.