Right to privacy: Emergency-era sterilisation echoes in Supreme Court

"Sterilisation was the worst experiment ever done on the poor people of the country," a nine-judge bench headed by Chief Justice JS Khehar said.

In September 1976, Sanjay Gandhi, son of the then prime minister Indira Gandhi, had initiated a widespread compulsory sterilisation programme to limit population growth.

The campaign primarily involved getting males to undergo vasectomy.

Attorney General KK Venugopal also termed the Emergency as the most unfortunate incident in the life of the country and said "we all hope that it will never occur again."

The remarks on sterilisation campaign was made by one of the judges when Venugopal was making submission on the facets of the right to privacy.

The attorney general said that during Emergency the fundamental rights of citizens were taken away and even politicians like former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi had to bear the burnt.

He then referred to the consequences suffered by the then ruling party for imposing Emergency and said that in Tamil Nadu, it (Congress) never came back to power.

Venugopal's statements were supported by senior advocate Gopal Subramanium who narrated that even the then attorney general was stopped by four sleuths from Intelligence Bureau and the other day he had collapsed in his chamber.

The contentious issue as to whether the right to privacy is a fundamental right or not was referred to a larger bench in 2015, as the Centre had vehemently raised the issue of two judgements delivered in 1950 and 1962 by the apex court that had held it was not a fundamental right.

Venuopal said that the right to privacy may be considered as a fundamental right under the Constitution, but many of its facets cannot be put under the fundamental rights category.