Right to life and personal liberty

Article 21 states that no person shall be deprived of their life or personal

liberty except according to a procedure established by law. At first this reads like a narrow,

almost technical guarantee -- it only promises that the state must follow SOME legal procedure

before taking away a person's life or liberty. Judicial interpretation, however, has transformed it

into the single most expansively read Fundamental Right in the Constitution.

The Supreme Court has held that the "procedure established by law" itself must be fair, just, and

reasonable, not arbitrary -- effectively bringing due process into Indian constitutional law even

though the framers did not use that exact phrase. Building on this, courts have read a long list of

unenumerated rights into Article 21's guarantee of "life": the right to livelihood, the right to

shelter, the right to a clean and healthy environment, the right to health, the right to education, …