Article 21 Expanded, and the Right to Live with Dignity

In one line

Article 21 grew from a guarantee that a deprivation must follow some procedure into a guarantee that the procedure must be fair, just and reasonable and that life means the right to live with human dignity, and everything a disadvantaged group has won in court since rests on those two moves.

The starting position

Article 21: no person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty except according to procedure established by law.

Read narrowly, the article requires only two things: a law, and a procedure in it. It does not on its face require the law to be reasonable or the procedure to be fair, and for the first quarter century of the Constitution that was substantially how it was read, with procedure established by law treated as deliberately different from due process of law, which the Constituent Assembly had considered and not adopted.

The first move: the procedure must be fair, just and reasonable

The case. Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India, (1978) 1 SCC 248.

Facts. The petitioner's passport was impounded by an order of the passport authority in the public interest, and the Government declined to furnish the reasons, relying on a provision permitting it to withhold them in the interests of the general public. She challenged the order under article 32, contending that the right to travel abroad was part of personal liberty under article 21 and that she had been deprived of it without a hearing.

Held. The order was not sustained on the basis on which it had been made, and the Court laid down that the three articles are not mutually exclusive. A law depriving a person of personal liberty must satisfy article 21, and the procedure it prescribes must be right, just and fair and not arbitrary, fanciful or oppressive; it must also satisfy article 14, since an arbitrary procedure is by that fact unequal; and where it affects a freedom in article 19 it must satisfy the corresponding reasonableness test. Personal liberty is of the widest amplitude and covers a variety of rights which go to constitute the personal liberty of a person, including the right to travel abroad.

Why this matters here. It converted article 21 from a formal guarantee into a substantive one, and it did so by linking articles 14, 19 and 21 into a single test. A disadvantaged group challenging a procedure now has a standard to apply rather than merely a form to check.

The second move: life means more than animal existence

The case. Francis Coralie Mullin v. Administrator, Union Territory of Delhi, (1981) 1 SCC 608.

Facts. A detenu under a preventive detention law complained of the restrictions placed on interviews with her lawyer and with members of her family, which were permitted only once a month and in the presence of a customs officer. She moved the Court under article 32 contending that the restrictions violated articles 14 and 21.