We live in strange times indeed, where the rules of logic are turned on their head every day with every new executive diktat or court ruling. The latest is this new epidemic of ‘privacy’ — one-sided, of course.

On the one hand, the government is doing everything it can to prise loose every shred of personal information from its citizens, through Aadhaar, PAN, voter registration, face recognition, DigiYatra, authorising the tax sleuths to mine everyone’s social media chats and emails, snooping in on their phone conversations through imported malware.

On the other, it refuses to share with the same citizens the information they are entitled to in order to meaningfully exercise their democratic rights. In other words, the citizen has no right to privacy, but the government has a sovereign right to it! 

When you buy a packet of noodles, you are entitled by law to know what it contains. But when you choose your Prime Minister — a more consequential decision, you will agree — you are not entitled to know whether he has a valid educational qualification or not. Even though he has declared it in his electoral nomination form, it has been displayed in a press conference by his Sancho Panza and published in many papers! For the Delhi High Court has ruled that this is private information and no public interest is served by revealing it.

There are so many threads of logical incoherence and fallacy in this ruling that it is difficult to separate them. For one, a person in public life cannot claim privacy in matters that may have a bearing on his character or functioning, such as educational qualifications, income and its sources, marital status, material disposition of his family members, whether he has a criminal past… These details are necessary for the public to decide whether or not confidence can be reposed in him/her.

Second, he has already disclosed this information on oath to the government (in this case, to the ECI) and it is no longer........

© National Herald