Published On: June 7th 2026
Authored By: Mankirat Singh
Incoming Law Student at
Symbiosis Law School Noida
Case Details
Full Case Name: Amar Jain v Union of India & Ors (clubbed with Pragya Prasun v Union of India & Ors)
Citation: WP(C) No 49 of 2025 and WP(C) No 289 of 2024, Supreme Court of India
Bench: Justice JB Pardiwala and Justice R Mahadevan
Date of Judgment: 30 April 2025
I. Introduction
India’s constitutional jurisprudence has long treated Article 21 as a living provision, capable of absorbing new dimensions of human dignity as social and technological realities evolve. From the right to livelihood recognised in Olga Tellis v Bombay Municipal Corporation[1] to the right to privacy affirmed in Justice KS Puttaswamy v Union of India,[2] the Supreme Court has consistently interpreted the right to life in a purposive and expansive manner. In Amar Jain v Union of India, this interpretive tradition entered the digital domain decisively. For the first time, the Court directly declared the right to digital access to be a constitutional entitlement under Article 21, holding that a citizen’s exclusion from essential digital infrastructure constitutes a deprivation of life with dignity. The judgment is as much a statement on the technological transformation of governance as it is a doctrinal contribution to fundamental rights law.
II. Facts and Issues
The two clubbed writ petitions were filed by disability rights advocates before the Supreme Court in 2024 and 2025 respectively. The petitioners challenged the mandatory electronic Know Your Customer (eKYC) framework administered by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), regulated by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI). The eKYC process (which relies on facial recognition, fingerprint biometrics, and a narrow one-time password (OTP) entry window) was structurally inaccessible for persons with disabilities, particularly those with visual impairments and acid attack survivors whose facial features had been permanently disfigured. These individuals were rendered unable to complete mandatory digital verification, and consequently excluded from banking services, welfare scheme enrolments, mobile telecommunications, and access to government portals.
The scale of the underlying problem was considerable. Approximately 70 per cent of India’s population either lacks or has inadequate access to digital services,[3] and the digital divide carries a pronounced gender dimension, with only 31 per cent of women owning mobile devices as against 61 per cent of men.[4] In this context, a person unable to complete eKYC is effectively locked out of the formal economy and civic participation. The Supreme Court issued notice on 21 January 2025, clubbed the petitions, reserved judgment on 28 January 2025, and delivered its verdict on 30 April 2025.
The principal legal questions before the Court were: first, whether the right to digital access is an intrinsic component of the fundamental right to life and personal liberty under Article 21 of the Constitution; second, whether the existing eKYC framework violated the rights of persons with disabilities under the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act 2016 (RPwD Act)[5] and the Constitution; and third, what affirmative obligations the State bears in ensuring an inclusive and accessible digital ecosystem.
III. Arguments of the Parties
The petitioners contended that the mandatory and exclusionary design of eKYC violated multiple constitutional guarantees. Drawing on the Puttaswamy judgment’s recognition of privacy, dignity, and autonomy as facets of Article 21, they argued that the right to meaningful participation in civic and economic life necessarily requires unobstructed access to digital platforms in the contemporary era. They further submitted that Sections 3, 40, and 42 of the RPwD Act impose a statutory duty on the government to implement reasonable accommodations in information and communication technologies, and that the failure to provide accessible alternatives (such as video-based KYC, offline verification, or human-assisted processes) constituted both a statutory violation and a constitutional breach. The petitioners also invoked India’s obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities[6] to reinforce the argument that digital accessibility is a legally enforceable obligation, not a discretionary aspiration.
The respondents, principally the Union of India along with UIDAI, RBI, and SEBI, maintained that eKYC was designed with efficiency and security as paramount concerns, and that alternative verification channels were available to users facing difficulties. They contended that the matter involved complex questions of regulatory policy and technical architecture, areas warranting judicial deference to expert regulators. The respondents further submitted that complete digital accessibility was a goal subject to progressive realisation, and that immediate, judicially mandated compliance across all digital platforms was neither practical nor constitutionally required.
IV. Judgment and Ratio Decidendi
The Supreme Court, in a judgment authored by Justice R Mahadevan, ruled decisively in favour of the petitioners.[7] The Court held that in an era where governance, healthcare, education, banking, and economic opportunity are mediated through digital platforms, access to those platforms is no longer separable from access to a life of dignity itself. Accordingly, the right to digital access was declared an intrinsic component of the right to life and personal liberty guaranteed by Article 21 of the Constitution.
The Court grounded its central reasoning in the principle of substantive equality. Formal neutrality, that is, designing a digital system that treats all users in an identical manner, does not satisfy the constitutional standard of equality when the system itself is constructed around the capabilities of a dominant group. A biometric authentication mechanism that functions seamlessly for a sighted user without disabilities is not a neutral tool for an acid attack survivor or a person with a visual impairment; it is an instrument of exclusion. Articles 14 and 15, read together with Article 21, were accordingly interpreted to impose on the State a positive obligation to design digital infrastructure that accommodates the diversity of its citizens.
The Court issued twenty binding directions requiring UIDAI to introduce accessible eKYC alternatives, mandating RBI and SEBI to revise their KYC frameworks, directing all government digital portals to comply with web accessibility standards under the RPwD Act, and requiring the Department of Telecommunications to ensure accessible digital services from telecom operators. The ratio decidendi may be stated as follows: where the exercise of a fundamental right in the contemporary social context is mediated through digital infrastructure, the State bears a constitutional duty under Article 21, read with Articles 14 and 15, to ensure such infrastructure is accessible to all citizens regardless of disability; and a failure to do so constitutes a justiciable violation of those rights.
V. Critical Analysis
Amar Jain v Union of India is a judgment that invites assessment on two levels: its doctrinal consistency with established precedent, and its practical implications for governance, regulation, and future litigation.
Doctrinal Consistency
At the doctrinal level, the decision fits squarely within the Supreme Court’s long-standing tradition of expansive Article 21 interpretation. In Maneka Gandhi v Union of India,[8] the Court established that any procedure depriving a person of life or liberty must be just, fair, and reasonable, a principle that strikes directly at digital frameworks which are procedurally operational but substantively exclusionary. In Olga Tellis, the right to livelihood was recognised as a facet of Article 21 because pavement dwellers deprived of their location of work were effectively deprived of life itself. The logic maps onto the digital context with considerable precision: a person deprived of digital access in 2025 is deprived of their bank account, their welfare entitlements, their voice in e-governance, and their ability to participate in the formal economy. The Court’s reasoning is, therefore, not a departure from precedent but a faithful application of it to changed circumstances.
The introduction of substantive equality as the governing standard for evaluating digital governance is perhaps the most significant conceptual contribution of the judgment. By holding that identical treatment does not constitute equal treatment when the baseline system is itself exclusionary, the Court has shifted the inquiry from process to outcome. This has implications well beyond persons with disabilities: it creates a doctrinal foundation upon which future claims involving algorithmic discrimination, digital surveillance, and platform-based exclusions of marginalised communities may be built.
Institutional and Implementation Concerns
However, the judgment also raises legitimate concerns about institutional competence. The twenty directions issued by the Court are technically specific and require sustained regulatory implementation. Critics may reasonably argue that courts are ill-placed to dictate the technical architecture of digital identity infrastructure, and that the respondents’ plea for regulatory deference had merit. It is worth noting that the Court does not adequately address the possibility that alternative verification mechanisms may introduce their own security vulnerabilities, a concern that regulators had raised and that deserved more rigorous judicial engagement.
A further concern is the enforceability gap that has historically afflicted India’s progressive constitutional jurisprudence. The right to education under Article 21-A, recognised formally in 2002, remains incompletely realised across significant sections of the population. The twenty directions in Amar Jain risk a similar fate absent robust compliance monitoring. The Court’s invocation of the Accessible India Campaign and the UNCRPD, while normatively appropriate, does not substitute for concrete implementation machinery.
Nonetheless, Amar Jain v Union of India stands as a principled and timely constitutional response to one of the defining structural inequities of the digital age. By declaring digital access a fundamental right and imposing affirmative obligations on State actors, the Court has moved the discourse from policy aspiration to legal entitlement. The judgment will serve as a foundation for a new generation of digital rights litigation in India, and its influence is likely to extend beyond the immediate remedy it provides to persons with disabilities.
References
[1] Olga Tellis v Bombay Municipal Corporation AIR 1986 SC 180.
[2] Justice KS Puttaswamy (Retd) v Union of India (2017) 10 SCC 1.
[3] India Inequality Report 2022 (Oxfam India) 34.
[4] Ibid 35.
[5] Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act 2016, ss 3, 40, 42.
[6] United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (adopted 13 December 2006, entered into force 3 May 2008) 2515 UNTS 3.
[7] Amar Jain v Union of India (Supreme Court of India, 30 April 2025) WP(C) No 49/2025.
[8] Maneka Gandhi v Union of India AIR 1978 SC 597.
