Legal experts expect a spurt in privacy-related litigation following the Supreme Court (SC) verdict. “Every government action could now be challenged in a court, if it is seen as violating a person’s privacy,” says cyber law expert and SC advocate Pavan Duggal.

Most legal experts expect more Aadhaar-related litigation to come up before the courts. “For instance, one could challenge the Aadhaar data collected from 2009 till the time the Aadhaar Act came into force in 2016, on grounds of violation of privacy,” noted another SC lawyer.

Jaising was of the view that the verdict also casts a shadow on the legitimacy of Section 377 of Indian Penal Code (involving unnatural offences). “We can now safely say that such prosecutions constitute a violation of privacy,” said Jaising.

Senior advocate Kamini Jaiswal agrees that the judgment will monumentally change the way the state and its citizens look at the role of privacy in day-to-day life. “The Aadhaar issue, in particular, will be intrinsically affected,” she adds.

While commending the government’s attempts at implementing a robust data privacy law, the court has highlighted several guiding principles, including those proposed by an expert group of the erstwhile Planning Commission. These principles include providing notice, allowing choice and consent, limiting collection of data to a specific purpose, access to individuals for corrections, prevention of unnecessary disclosures, and maintenance of security openness and accountability. Jaising says these guidelines have thrown the data protection ball squarely in the government’s court.

Lawyers point out that the judgment has not gone into the specific entitlements and interests that comprise the fundamental rights to privacy, which have to be weighed on a case-to-case basis.