Public Interest vs Privacy: Ratan Tata Moves Supreme Court Over Radia Tapes

Ratan Tata, chairman of the Tata Group, moved the Supreme Court on Monday, arguing that his right to privacy had been violated by the leak of his recorded telephone conversations with corporate lobbyist Niira Radia.

The petition — filed through the law firm Karanjawala & Co and argued by senior advocate Harish Salve — asked the court to order a probe into how the tapes, recorded during Income Tax surveillance of Radia's phones in 2008-09, had leaked to the media, and to ensure that no further tapes in the government's possession were leaked. It invoked the fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution, including the individual's right to privacy under Article 21.

The conversations, parts of which had already been published by sections of the media, allegedly touched on the 2G spectrum allocation controversy. Radia's firm, Vaishnavi Corporate Communications, handled corporate communications for the Tata Group — a relationship that placed Tata's name inside a surveillance operation aimed at someone else.

The petition framed the central question of the Radia tapes episode: where does the public's right to know end and the individual's right to privacy begin? The tapes were newsworthy because they exposed the nexus between lobbyists, politicians, and journalists. But they were also private conversations, recorded by the state for tax investigations, whose path to the front pages nobody had explained.

Tata's move did not dispute the tapes' contents. It disputed their journey. And in doing so, it forced the country to confront an uncomfortable corollary of its appetite for leaks: the machinery of exposure, once built, does not distinguish between its targets.