--- layout: default title: "Court's Approval Needed to Tap Phones: Panel" description: "A Mint news report by Surabhi Agarwal and Aman Malik on the Shah committee's privacy law recommendations, with Sunil Abraham on the absence of a horizontal regulatory framework in India." categories: [Media mentions] date: 2012-10-18 authors: ["Surabhi Agarwal", "Aman Malik"] source: "Mint" permalink: /media/courts-approval-phones-shah-panel-privacy-mint/ created: 2026-02-28 --- **Court's Approval Needed to Tap Phones: Panel** is a *Mint* news report by Surabhi Agarwal and Aman Malik published on 18 October 2012. The piece covers the recommendations of the expert committee chaired by retired Delhi High Court judge Ajit P. Shah on India's proposed privacy law, which called for judicial authorisation before any surveillance could be initiated, with a narrow 15–20 day executive window for genuine emergencies only. [Sunil Abraham](/sunil/) welcomes the initiative while stressing that without a comprehensive regulatory framework and an independent privacy commissioner, both state and private entities would continue to trample on citizens' rights unchecked. ## Contents 1. [Article Details](#article-details) 2. [Full Text](#full-text) 3. [Context and Background](#context-and-background) 4. [External Link](#external-link) ## Article Details
📰 Published in:
Mint
📅 Date:
18 October 2012
👤 Authors:
Surabhi Agarwal; Aman Malik
👥 Contributor:
Kirthi V. Rao
📄 Type:
News Report
📰 Newspaper Link:
Read Online
## Full Text

New Delhi: Government agencies need judicial permission before intercepting any communication or starting surveillance of any individual, a panel on the proposed privacy law suggested on Thursday.

If there is any urgency, investigators can tap phones or monitor a person's movements for 15–20 days on executive orders but will then have to approach the courts to continue, the committee led by retired Delhi High Court judge Ajit P. Shah recommended.

"Phone tapping under the present regime is done under executive permission whereas in other countries it is done only with the permission of the courts," Shah said.

Security agencies currently require permission from home secretaries, either at the Centre or the states, to set up wiretaps or monitor emails. An oversight group of the cabinet, law and telecom secretaries at the Centre reviews all such authorizations.

Shah said on Thursday that the committee was "not interested" in preparing a privacy law but has only laid down the principles.

The department of personnel and training will deliberate on the panel's recommendations and then draft a legislation, said Ashwani Kumar, junior minister in the Planning Commission.

The Shah panel has recommended appointing privacy commissioners and a system under which organizations will have to develop privacy standards that will be approved by a commissioner as a means of self-regulation.

Sectoral industry associations would form a code of conduct for companies that will comply with law as they will be approved by the privacy commissioner, according to Kamlesh Bajaj, chief executive officer of Data Security Council of India, one of the members of the committee. "These associations could also act as alternative dispute-resolution mechanisms," Bajaj said.

The committee's other recommendations include giving individuals a choice to provide personal information, collection of only critical personal information, use of data only for the purpose for which it has been collected, and a penalty for violations.

"Without a comprehensive horizontal regulatory framework and the office of the regulator both private and public entities in India have been trampling on the rights of citizens without complying to any of the international best practices when it comes to protecting the right to privacy," said Sunil Abraham, executive director of Centre for Internet and Society, a Bangalore-based advocacy group. After the privacy law is enacted and the office of a privacy commissioner is created, people will be able to seek redressal against these erring public and private entities if their rights are violated, he added.

The government has been looking to enact a privacy law to ensure data collected by various programmes such as the National Population Register, Unique Identification Authority of India and National Intelligence Grid was not misused. It was expected to scotch criticism of these programmes by privacy and Internet activists. It later expanded the scope of the proposed legislation after catching flak for a leak of tapped conversations between corporate lobbyist Niira Radia, industrialists and journalists.

The government now aims to uphold the right of all Indians against any misuse of personal information, interception of personal communication, unlawful surveillance and unwanted commercial communication. That means it effectively covers everything from the misuse of data collected by the government to spam.

However, there could be opposition from law enforcement agencies if the privacy law mandates that prior permission of the courts will be required before intercepting communication.

If judges begin taking a call on interception requests, there could be chances of leakage, "since there are so many judges at so many levels", said Rumel Dahiya, deputy director general at Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses, a New Delhi-based think tank. "The government carries out surveillance to gain fool-proof intelligence. That purpose will be defeated."

Last week, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said a fine balance needs to be maintained between the right to information and the right to privacy.

The Shah committee included representatives from the private sector, the department of information technology, ministry of home affairs, department of telecommunication, the law ministry and the department of personnel and training.

Kirthi V. Rao contributed to this story.

{% include back-to-top.html %} ## Context and Background This article appeared in October 2012, at a moment when the Indian government was under mounting pressure to produce a comprehensive privacy law. The immediate political context included the Radia tapes controversy — the 2010 leak of intercepted phone conversations between corporate lobbyist Niira Radia and several prominent journalists and industrialists — which had exposed both the breadth of government surveillance and the absence of any legal framework governing how intercepted material could be used or disclosed. The Shah committee had been constituted in part to address this gap, though its mandate had expanded to cover the full range of data protection questions raised by Aadhaar, the National Population Register and the National Intelligence Grid. The committee's central recommendation — judicial authorisation before any surveillance — represented a significant structural departure from existing law. Under the Indian Telegraph Act and the IT Act as then in force, wiretap orders were issued by home secretaries (at the Centre or state level) without any judicial oversight whatsoever. The Shah panel's proposal to require a court order, with only a narrow 15–20 day emergency window for executive action, aligned Indian law with the standard in most democratic jurisdictions. The resistance from law enforcement, articulated by Rumel Dahiya in the final section of the article, was predictable: the argument that judicial involvement risked intelligence leaks was the standard objection raised whenever surveillance oversight was proposed. Sunil Abraham's comment frames the issue at the systemic level. His point is that the absence of any "horizontal regulatory framework" — a single privacy law applying equally to state and private actors — had created a permissive environment in which both government agencies and commercial entities operated with impunity. The Shah committee's recommendations, if enacted, would address both dimensions simultaneously. In practice, India would wait until 2023 for the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, and the question of judicial oversight for surveillance remains unresolved to date. ## External Link - [Read on Mint](https://www.livemint.com/Politics/TKvdGjj2mMcp2FNgwIVLeP/Courts-approval-needed-to-tap-phones.html)