INTRODUCTION
On 12 th May,2022, the Supreme Court of India delivered a significant judgement in which it held that the directive of the State Governments and Union Territories to make vaccination compulsory was unreasonable. Justice Nageshwara Rao delivered the judgement ( also on behalf of Justice Br Gavai) and also directed the Central Government to release the data of clinical trials subject to the privacy of the individuals.
REASONING OF THE COURT
Coming to the substantive part of the judgement which struck down the policy of mandatory vaccination, it becomes essential to bring to the notice of the readers how the Court arrived at its reasoning. The Apex court has held that vaccine mandates do not satisfy the test of proportionality as laid down in the landmark case of K.S. Puttaswamy v. UOI (2017). The test of proportionality as elucidated by the court seeks to measure whether the object and the need that is desired to be fulfilled are proportional to the measures adopted in the law to achieve them. It also measures whether the law imposed is disproportionate to the fundamental right that is infringed by the law in achieving the objective.
The Supreme Court while deciding the proportionality of the vaccine mandates has come to the conclusion that the restrictions imposed by the rules of vaccine mandates are not proportionate to the restrictions imposed on the unvaccinated persons. The court found that there is no demonstrable data to prove that the coronavirus spread only from the unvaccinated persons and not from the vaccinated persons. This is significant considering the fact that a huge misconception exists in the society where it is generally considered that those who are not vaccinated pose a virus threat to the society. The apex court held that the vaccine mandate that infringes Article 21 of the Petitioner is not in proportionate as “both vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals presently appear to be susceptible to the transmission of virus at the similar level.”, thus, there is no reasonable ground for the restrictions to be continued on the unvaccinated persons.
PRUDENT MENTION OF FOREIGN JURISDICTIONS
The court also took note of the developments around the world in which the Courts stepped up in order to defend the rights of the individuals. For example, the Court has cited the case of New York where the city was divided into various zones such as red and orange on the basis of the Covid threat. By the majority,the Supreme Court had held that the said restrictions were violative of the first amendment of the Constitution. Significantly the Court had also explicitly stated that fundamental rights cannot be put away even in time of a pandemic.The Court in detail also dwelt on other foreign jurisdictions such as New Zealand and New South Wales( a state in Australia) in order to show how active judiciary was in times of Covid 19 to safeguard personal liberty of the citizens of the country. The examples of these countries were likely given in order to lead to the inference that the courts all over the world in leading constitutional democracies have played a significant role in stepping up in order to ensure that basic fundamental rights of the citizens of the country remain intact.
CONCLUSION
The judgement definitely comes as a big relief for the citizens of the country since those who were still unvaccinated had been put at a disadvantageous position due to the fact that they were being denied benefits of various services . It is hoped that various State Governments will take back their directive of mandatory vaccination in light of the judgement pronounced. At the same, there is no more discretion left for the Government to decide on which data it wants to release and which not. Overall, the judgement serves a good purpose for ensuring that the executive is held accountable for its unjust and arbitrary policies.