Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad maintained that the government has always acknowledged the need for privacy, stating that his party colleague and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley told the Rajya Sabha that "Right to Privacy is a fundamental right". The minister's reaction came after the Supreme Court declared that privacy is a constitutional right. The verdict passed by the nine-member bench is seen as a major setback for the government, which had argued that the Constitution does not guarantee individual privacy as an inalienable fundamental right. "The right to privacy is protected as an intrinsic part of the right to life and personal liberty under Article 21 and as a part of the freedoms guaranteed by Part III of the Constitution," the judges declared in the 547-page order.
