Case against live-streaming of classroom footage (Privacy and Constitutional Law)
We are representing, pro bono, the Delhi Parents Association and the Government School Teacher’s Association, in a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) before the Delhi High Court.
This is a writ petition challenging the Delhi Education Department’s decision to live stream video footage of children and teachers to outsiders, without obtaining consent.
The Education Department, without any scientific research to study the impact of constant surveillance on young children, hurriedly decided to install 149,000 cameras inside thousands of classrooms in Delhi. We succeeded in having the case admitted for hearing on 22nd February 2021[1] and the next date of hearing, in this case, is 30th March 2022.
Our case concerns ‘the right to privacy’ of both, children and teachers, to not have their day broadcast to outsiders, especially in the absence of a data protection regime in India.
Furthermore, the right to privacy was upheld as a fundamental right under the Indian Constitution by the Supreme Court in a landmark 9-bench decision by K. Puttaswamy in 2017.
This case will be crucial to widening privacy jurisprudence in India by making ‘consent’ a necessary precondition for non-security related surveillance.
