Telephone Tapping is Invasion of Right to Privacy

Right to privacy is a part of right to life and liberty as enshrined in Article 21 of Constitution of India, and is extended to Telephone tapping but right to Information cannot be invoked in the matter.

The Indian Telegraph Act was enacted in the year 1885 and the Indian
Telegraph Rules was enacted in the year 1951, section 5 of sub-section 2 provides for tapping phones in case of public emergency, threat to public security; among others but no procedure and safe guard was provided either in the Indian Telegraph Act or in the Indian Telegraph rules, until 1999 after 104 years when section 419 A was inserted in Indian Telegraph Rules providing for procedures to be adopted for tapping of phones affording reasonable safe guards but not until a social organization, people Union for Civil Liberties filed a Public Interest Litigation in Supreme Court of India, since there was no provision in the Constitution of India directly recognizing the Right to Privacy as fundamental right or at least as constitutional right. It was necessary there fore to decide upon the right first.

The Supreme Court laid a triple-test to weigh the constitutional validity of a right.



1. The right must fall within the sweep of Article 19(1) (a) or Article 21 of the Constitution of India.

2. if the right canvassed is not found within the sweep of and is mere concomitant, expanse of fundamental right then validity shall not be tested with reference to clause 2 to 6 of Article 19 but from the point of view of reasonableness.

Applying the test the SupermeCourt came to the conclusion that Right to Privacy and for that matter telephonic conversation was a part of Article 21 i.e. Right to Life and Liberty which couldn’t be curtailed except according to procedure established by law.

Since neither the Telegraph Act nor the Telegraph Rules contained any procedures for phone tapping, giving un-bridled freedom to the authorities, it laid down detailed procedures. The procedures were ultimately incorporated in Indian Telegraph Rule by way of insertation of Rule 419 A n the year 1999. Rule 419 A says:

That only secretary to Central Government or secretaries to State Governments as the cause may be give order for interception of messages only when the information could not reasonably be acquired by other means.

The Order can be in force for a period of 90 days unless revoked earlier and in any case it shall not exceed 180 days.
The Order shall be reviewed by a high power review committee within 60 days of the date of Order to ensure that the Order is in accordance with the purposes set out in the section 5 (2) Of Indian Telegraph Act and I it is found otherwise the Direction shall be set aside and all copies of interrupted messages shall be ordered to destructed.

It is now settled; position of law that phone tapping is a secret affair and a citizen cannot invoke the Right to Information Act to seek information or document regarding phone tapping.