Right to life

Submitted by

Ishan Bhaduri

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Division: E, Prn. No.: 18010223123, Class of: 2018-23

Symbiosis Law School, NOIDA

Symbiosis International (Deemed University), PUNE

------------------

In

August ,2019

Under the guidance of

Dr. Shahi Bhushan Ojha

( Assistant Professor)

And

Mr. Ahmed Ali

(Assistant Professor)
 CERTIFICATE

The Project entitled “Right to Life” submitted to the Symbiosis Law School, NOIDA for
Political Science -II as part of internal assessment is based on my original work carried out
under the guidance of Dr. Shahi Bhushan Ojha (Assistant Professor) and Dr. Ahmed Ali
(Assistant Professor), from 10th July to 7th August. The research work has not been submitted
elsewhere for award of any degree.

The material borrowed from other sources and incorporated in the thesis has been duly
acknowledged.

I understand that I myself could be held responsible and accountable for plagiarism, if any,
detected later on.

Signature of the candidate:-

Date:-
 Right to Life

Introduction:
Article 21 of the Indian Constitution says that, “No person shall be deprived
of his life or personal liberty except according to a procedure established
by law.”

The article 21 of the constitution of India holds a very soulful status in our
constitution because without this article none of the other articles would be
able to hold ground. This article not only gives us, the citizen of India, the
right to claim right to life but also to any other foreign national as well, this
is because the provision has the word ‘persons’ in it and not citizens, if it
had been otherwise the right would only be kept reserved to the nationals
of the Indian nation. Article 21 can only be claimed when a person is
deprived of his “life” or “personal liberty” by the “State” as defined in Article
12. Violation of the right by private individuals is not within the preview of
Article 21.

I will be further discussing the scope and meaning of the term, “Right to
life” further in this project and will be putting forward the wide nature of
article 21. The article 21 of the constitution can be called as a soul which
brings in life into the bodies of the other existing articles in the form of
meaning. Therefore the article 21 is one of the most important articles in
our constitution.

Meaning and Scope:

The core meaning of life is not only breathing but also living with dignity
and honour. The article 21 is the basic fundamental right that gives
existence to all the other rights existing in this modern world of ours. It is
the article 21 that gives meaning to the mere existence of human beings
and without this right all the other rights are baseless and the very
existence of human life is useless. Article 21 of the Constitution of India,
1950 provides that, “No person shall be deprived of his life or personal
liberty except according to procedure established by law.” Even though the
idea of euthanasia is a topic pretty disputed if taken into consideration
along with the crux of the article 21 i.e. right to life. The basic idea of
euthanasia is to speed up the process of an individual’s already decided
fate that is death, to assist him to cut the excruciating journey of pain that
individual will suffer if he or she dies a natural death by a natural process.
Euthanasia can’t be followed by a person who is healthy physically but is
mentally depressed and is wanting to end his/her life.

In Sunil Batra v. Delhi Administration[ii], the Supreme Court reiterated

with the approval the above observations and held that the “right to life”
included the right to lead a healthy life so as to enjoy all faculties of the
human body in their prime conditions. It would even include the right to
protection of a person’s tradition, culture, heritage and all that gives
meaning to a man’s life. It includes the right to live in peace, to sleep in
peace and the right to repose and health.

The scope of the article 21 is very wide. Beneath is an attempt to cover a

few of those topics: -

Right To Live with Human Dignity:

Right to live with human dignity is a very interesting sounding term but in
reality is it really accessible to everyone in our country. To live with dignity
means to be able to get one’s hands on the basic necessities of the live
such as clothing, shelter, food, able to express oneself freely, to be able to
move here and there as per one’s own will and do things according to one’s
own self. The concepts, articles and laws speak a lot about all these things
but is it really doing any good to the masses of the nation. Not to forget
that the population of our country also includes the differently abled
individuals too. Now there’s a reason I mentioned the differently abled
persons, lets understand the concept of the article 21 with this one
example, suppose yourself as a blind individual who is from a not so
economically strong family and you have to struggle for even the basics of
life that others perform very diligently and easily, for example let’s say you
need to write an article and you want it to be done on a laptop or PC will
you be able to express yourself properly without having the ability to see,
locate and analyse the alphabets on the keypad? There are companies who
produce laptops that have the provision of braille but the cost of that service
in a machine makes it even unimaginable for thousands and thousands of
the population and the issue of availability is omnipresent.

If only all the problems were solved by having this article in the pages of
our constitution the undermining and oppression faced by the women
shouldn’t have been existing then. Therefore, having a mere law is not the
actual solution but the public respecting that law and having a mind set to
abide by it what makes a provision effective.

Right Against Sexual Harassment at Workplace:

Art. 21 guarantees the right to life right to life with dignity. The court in
this context has observed that:

“The meaning and content of fundamental right guaranteed in the

constitution of India are of sufficient amplitude to encompass all facets of
gender equality including prevention of sexual harassment or abuse.”

Sexual Harassment of women has been held by the Supreme Court to be

violative of the most cherished of the fundamental rights, namely, the Right
to Life contained in Art. 21.
Right Against Rape:
Rape has been held to a violation of a person’s fundamental life guaranteed
under Art. 21. Right to life right to live with human dignity. Right to life,
would, therefore, include all those aspects of life that go on to make life
meaningful, complete and worth living.

Right to Education:

‘Right to education is one of the most important aspect human beings

without which no one can lead good, decent and dignified life. Earlier, it
was the part of Directive Principles of State Policy. However as per the
changing needs of the society Supreme Court in Mohini Jain Vs. State of
Karnataka (1992 SC) and Unni Krishna Vs. state of Andhra Pradesh
(1993 SC) ruled that right to education is a fundamental right as it directly
flows from right to life.’

Right to Reputation:
Reputation is an important part of one’s life. It is one of the finer graces of
human civilization that makes life worth living. The Supreme Court referring
to D.F. Marion v. Minnie Davis[xiii] in Smt. Kiran Bedi v. Committee
of Inquiry[xiv] held that “good reputation was an element of personal
security and was protected by the Constitution, equally with the right to
the enjoyment of life, liberty, and property. The court affirmed that the
right to enjoyment of life, liberty, and property. The court affirmed that the
right to enjoyment of private reputation was of ancient origin and was
necessary to human society.”

The same American Decision has also been referred to in the case of State
of Maharashtra v. Public Concern of Governance Trust[xv], where
the Court held that good reputation was an element of personal security
and was protected by the constitution, equally with the right to the
enjoyment of life, liberty, and property.

It has been held that the right equally covers the reputation of a person
during and after his death. Thus, any wrong action of the state or agencies
that sullies the reputation of a virtuous person would certainly come under
the scope of Art. 21.

Right to Health:
Social justice which is a device to ensure life to be meaningful and livable
with human dignity requires the State to provide to workmen facilities and
opportunities to reach at least minimum standard of health, economic
security and civilized living. The health and strength of worker, the court
said, was an important facet of right to life. Denial thereof denudes the
workmen the finer facets of life violating Art. 21.

No Right to Die:
Art. 21 confers on a person the right to live a dignified life. Does, it also
confers a right not to live or a right to die if a person chooses to end his
life? If so, what is the fate of Sec. 309, I.P.C., 1860, which punishes a
person convicted of attempting to commit suicide? There has been a
difference of opinion on the justification of this provision to continue on the
statute book.

Euthanasia and Right to Life:

Euthanasia is termination of the life of a person who is terminally ill or in a
permanent vegetative state. In Gian Kaur v. State of Punjab[lvii], the
Supreme Court has distinguished between Euthanasia and attempt to
commit suicide. The court held that death due to termination of natural life
is certain and imminent and the process of natural death has commenced.
These are not cases of extinguishing life but only of accelerating conclusion
of the process of natural death that has already commenced.

Right to get Pollution Free Water and Air:

Right to live is a fundamental right under Art 21 of the Constitution and it
includes the right of enjoyment of pollution free water and air for full
enjoyment of life. If anything endangers or impairs that quality of life in
derogation of laws, a citizen has right to have recourse to Art.32 of the
Constitution for removing the pollution of water or air which may be
detrimental to the quality of life.

RESEARCH QUESTION:
 What is the jurisprudence behind the embedding of article
21 in the Indian constitution?
‘The Supreme Court and the High Courts have been enlarging the scope of
the Article with various activist judgments. Initially, the phrase ‘personal
liberty’ was interpreted narrowly to confine the protection of Article 21 to
freedom of the person against unlawful detention. In Gopalan vs. State of
Madras case, the majority bench of Supreme Court propounded the view
that by adopting the expression procedure established by law’, Art. 21 of
our Constitution had embodied the English concept of personal liberty in
preference to that of American ‘due process of law’, even though, according
to the minority opinion of the bench, the result of such interpretation was
to throw “the most important fundamental right to life and personal liberty”
“at the mercy of legislative majorities.’

‘The concept of “personal liberty” gradually began to be liberally interpreted

by the Judiciary. The Supreme Court, in Kharak Singh v. State of UP, 1963,
held, “…that ‘personal liberty’ is used in the Article as a compendious term
to include within itself all the varieties of rights which go to make up the
“personal liberties” of man other than those dealt with in the several
clauses of Article 19(1). In other words, while Article 19(1) deals with
particular species or attributes of that freedom, “personal liberty” in Article
21 takes in and comprises the residue.” In simple words, the Right to
freedom is just one of the incidences of Right to life and personal liberty.
So whatever applies to Right to freedom- in this case the test of
reasonableness- applies to Right to life and personal liberty. In the case of
Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India, (1978), the Court examined all the
judgments in previous cases and observed that: “The expression ‘personal
liberty’ in Article 21 is of the widest amplitude and it covers a variety of
rights which go to constitute the personal liberty of man and some of them
have been raised to the status of distinct Fundamental Rights and given
additional protection under Article 19.’

‘As a result, a law coming under Art. 21 must also satisfy the requirements
of Art. 19. In other words, a law made by the State which seeks to deprive
a person of his personal liberty must prescribe a procedure for such
deprivation which must not be arbitrary, unfair or unreasonable. Once the
test of reasonableness is imported to determine the validity of a law
depriving a person of his liberty, it follows that such law shall be invalid if
it violates the principles of natural justice.’

CONCLUSION:

‘Article 21 is a live provision in the constitution of India which constantly

evolves like an organism and inherits the traits of dynamism that caters
the needs of the society. The Ambit of right to life and personal liberty
keeps on expanding and will evolve further in future through various judicial
pronouncements and legislative enactment. It is serves as an under-stream
that touches every fundamental right in part III of the Indian Constitution.’
‘On the basis of reasonability and non-arbitrariness and the principles of
natural justice which are enshrined within the Ambit of article 21, many
rights have been evolved till date through Hon’ble Supreme Court’s
interpretations in its judgements. Some other rights within the ambit of
Article 21, which have been evolved through various precedents of Apex
Court, but have not been covered in detail in this write-up are: right to
environment, Right of prisoners, right to speedy and fair trial, right against
sexual harassment, right against handcuffing, right to medical care, Right
to food and right against malnutrition, right against custodial violence, right
not to be subjected to bonded labour, right to Legal Aid, right against
solitary confinement, right against bar fetters, right to pure drinking water,
right to reputation, etc.’

‘Thus, to meet the new challenges in the society and to fulfil the dynamic
needs of the society the judicial system or the legislature will come up with
new facets of article 21.’

REFRENCES:

 Google
 Google-scholar
 www.equalityhumanrights.com