Most people have consolidated their inheritance by the time they are 91 years old. Not justice KS Puttaswamy.

The retired Karnataka High Court judge had already served on the bench with distinction, delivered critical tax verdicts and then presided over a series of tribunals till he turned 91 in February 2017.

But on August 24 that year, his legacy was set in stone when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of his petition related to the Aadhaar scheme, holding that the right to privacy is a fundamental right under the Constitution.

That nine-judge Constitution verdict, widely considered among the most important in India’s legal history, would go on to influence decisions on matters as varied as challenging India’s colonial-era ban on homosexuality and the criminalization of adultery.

Widely celebrated as a civil rights icon, Puttaswamy died at his residence in Bengaluru on Monday. He was 98 years old.

Born on 6 February 1926, Puttaswamy was educated at the Maharaja’s College in Mysore and went on to study law at the Government Law College, Bengaluru.

He started practicing as a lawyer in 1951 and was appointed as a Judge of the Karnataka High Court in 1977.

There, he ruled that the Center can levy capital gains tax on the sale of agricultural land and gave relief to petitioners in the sales tax law, overturning the arbitrary decisions of officials. He retired from the High Court in 1986 and continued his service in the administrative sector, becoming the First Vice-President of the Bengaluru Central Administrative Tribunal in September 1986.

In November 1989, he was appointed as the first President of the Andhra Pradesh Administrative Tribunal constituted under the Uniform Administrative Tribunals Act. On 26 January 1994, then Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Kotla Vijayabhaskara Reddy constituted the State Commission for Backward Classes under the chairmanship of Puttaswamy.

In 2012, Puttaswamy decided to come out of retirement to challenge the mandatory enrollment of people under Aadhaar, a unique 12-digit identification number that was first introduced in 2009, saying it violated the fundamental right to privacy. Other petitioners in the case were the first chairperson of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, Shanta Sinha, activist Aruna Roy and activist and former soldier Sudhir G Vombatkere.

The petition prompted the apex court to set up a nine-judge panel to review the fairness of previous rulings, including some by eight judges and one by six judges, which ruled that privacy is not a fundamental right.

On August 24, 2017, the bench — comprising then Chief Justice of India JS Khehar, along with Justices J Chelameswar, SA Bobde, RK Agrawal, RF Nariman, AM Sapre, DY Chandrachud, SK Kaul and S Abdul Nazeer — unanimously held that “the right to privacy is protected as an intrinsic part of the right to life and personal liberty under Article 21 of the Constitution.”

“Let the right to privacy, an inherent right, be unequivocally a fundamental right embodied in Part III of the Constitution of India, but subject to specified restrictions, attached to that Part. This is today’s call. The old order is changing, giving way to the new,” the court said.

Recognizing privacy as an independently enforceable right, the court upheld free speech and stated that citizens have a right against arbitrary and unregulated state surveillance. It granted the supremacy of the individual over information about his personality and recognized privacy as intrinsic to dignity, freedom and autonomy, albeit with reasonable restrictions.

Puttaswamy called the judgment a “landmark”.

“I am completely vindicated by the decision,” he said at the time, underscoring his position that Aadhaar should be voluntary. “My view has always been that Aadhaar enrollment can be made voluntary, in which case I would not have filed a petition.”

“My view was the collection of biometric data of all citizens by a private agency without any proper legislation to protect this data. At the same time, the identity could be used by illegal immigrants.”

The verdict also overturned the 1976 ADM Jabalpur judgment which, at the time, held that freedom was a regulated freedom and could be revoked under certain circumstances.

Widely regarded as among India’s most important civil liberties victories, the judgment not only placed the “individual” at the center of the issue, but also spurred the transformation of a number of related cases, such as the challenge against Section 377 of Indian Penal Code. .

“Sexual orientation is an essential attribute of private life. Discrimination against a person on the basis of sexual orientation is deeply offensive to an individual’s dignity and self-esteem. Equality requires that the sexual orientation of every individual in society be protected on a uniform platform. The right to privacy and protection of sexual orientation is at the heart of the fundamental rights guaranteed by Articles 14, 15 and 21 of the Constitution,” the court said.

This was instrumental in overturning Section 377 a year later on September 6, 2018.

It was also at the heart of the court’s reasoning in the Joseph Shine case, where a five-judge bench struck down Section 497 of the IPC — which criminalized adultery — on the grounds that it violated Articles 14, 15 and 21 of the Constitution.

Such was the impact and importance of the verdict that then-Attorney General KK Venugopal, who argued against overturning earlier rulings that left privacy outside fundamental protections, called it “extraordinary”.

“We now have an extraordinary judgment which has upheld the right to privacy as a major fundamental right which, if you look at the newspapers or on television, has been welcomed by every person in this country. And this, I think, is one of the greatest things that the Supreme Court of India has done,” he said at the time.

Puttaswamy was also a strong proponent of building dams to provide irrigation facilities to farmers, although he preferred smaller dams to larger ones. “With all due respect, the Supreme Court’s interference in the Narmada dam issue is not legally sound and justified,” he once wrote in an opinion piece. He also spoke out against indiscriminate construction in Bengaluru at the cost of its green cover.

Kiran Jonnalagadda, a digital rights activist, found Puttaswamy’s work crucial.

“The (privacy) case was crucial because it saw privacy concerns long before others. He saw the problems that could arise and approached the court.”