Recently, Supreme Court in Amar Jain V Union of India and Ors. judgment held that inclusive and meaningful digital access to e-governance and welfare delivery systems is a part of the fundamental right to life and liberty.

Key Highlights of Judgment

• Directed to revise the digital Know-Your-Customer (KYC) norms: To enable persons with facial disfiguration due to acid attacks or visual impairment to access banking and e-governance services.
  • Under the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, the Court issued twenty directions to make the eKYC process accessible to them.
• Invoking the ‘principle of substantive equality’: Digital transformation must be both inclusive and equitable.
• Part of Article 21: Right to digital access emerges as an instinctive component of the right to life and liberty.
• State's obligation: Under Articles 21 [Right to a dignified life], 14 [Right to Equality], 15 [Right against discrimination], and 38 [directs the State to promote Social Justice] of the Constitution, state is obliged to ensure digital infrastructure to all vulnerable marginalized populations.

Significance of inclusive digital access: Access essential governmental schemes, reducing rural-urban divide, access to online learning platforms, and financial technologies, inclusion of marginalised in development process, etc.