Moot Memorial Pack: Facial Recognition Policing & the Right to Privacy under Article 21

This bundle is a complete moot court pack built around a fictional constitutional dispute: the State of Suryagarh in the Union of Indica rolls out Project Nazar, a live facial-recognition network that matches CCTV feeds from bus stands, markets and college gates against a 'watch-list' and shares the matches with the police through a state data hub — all under an executive order, with no statute behind it. A civil-liberties trust challenges the scheme before the Supreme Court of Indica under Article 32.

The pack contains three things your clinical course actually grades. First, a moot proposition with a clean statement of facts and four issues. Second, two full memorials — one for the Petitioner (blue cover) and one for the Respondent (red cover) — each with index of authorities, statement of jurisdiction, summary of arguments, arguments advanced and prayer. Third, a seminar paper (about 4,000 words) that steps back from advocacy and asks whether India's privacy framework after Puttaswamy and the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 is ready for biometric surveillance in public spaces.

The method is doctrinal and comparative: Indian Supreme Court precedent is read alongside the UK Court of Appeal's Bridges decision and the US Supreme Court's Carpenter ruling. Every authority is cited in Bluebook 21st edition style, and the pack shows how to prepare oral submissions and rebuttals for a 15-minute speaking slot.

Abstract

Live facial-recognition technology (FRT) is spreading across Indian cities through smart-city and policing projects, often authorised by executive orders rather than legislation. This project prepares a moot memorial pack and a seminar paper on whether such a scheme survives the four-fold proportionality test laid down in Justice K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2017) 10 SCC 1. The fictional Project Nazar case lets both sides of the argument be built with the same authorities, which is exactly what a moot court exercise under the BCI clinical course is designed to test.

Introduction

The right to privacy was declared a fundamental right by a nine-judge bench in 2017, flowing mainly from Article 21 and also from the freedoms in Part III. The bench identified three conditions for any intrusion: a law authorising it (legality), a legitimate state aim, and proportionality between the aim and the means, with procedural safeguards against abuse. FRT tests every one of these limbs because it collects biometric data from everyone in a public place, not only suspects, and because error rates and bias are well documented.

Existing literature and gap

• Indian writing on privacy after 2017 focuses heavily on Aadhaar (Puttaswamy II, (2019) 1 SCC 1) and telephone tapping (PUCL, (1997) 1 SCC 301).
• Surveillance in public spaces is thinly covered in Indian case law; the closest foreign authority is R (Bridges) v. Chief Constable of South Wales Police [2020] EWCA Civ 1058.
• The DPDP Act, 2023 allows the Central Government to exempt state instrumentalities by notification, which leaves open how far statutory data protection actually limits police use of biometrics.
• Gap: there is little student-level work that applies the proportionality limbs step by step to a concrete FRT scheme and then tests the counter-arguments the State would raise.

Proposed work

1. Draft a moot proposition with four issues (maintainability, legality under Art. 21, arbitrariness under Art. 14, chilling effect under Art. 19(1)(a) and (d)).
2. Draft the Petitioner's and Respondent's memorials with an index of at least 25 authorities each.
3. Write a seminar paper comparing the Indian, UK and US approaches.
4. Prepare oral submissions, a rebuttal bank and a trial-observation note from a real hearing on a public-law matter.

Feasibility

All primary sources are available through SCC Online or Manupatra (college subscriptions) and the free India Code portal. The work fits a 10-week clinical calendar with three team members: two speakers and one researcher. No personal data of real individuals is used; the facts are fictional.

Several Indian states and city police forces have deployed or procured facial-recognition systems that scan faces in public places and match them against databases of suspects, missing persons or 'habitual offenders'. These deployments are usually authorised by government orders, tender documents or smart-city guidelines, not by a statute that defines who may be watched, how long images are kept, who can access matches and what remedy a wrongly matched person has.

After Puttaswamy, any invasion of privacy must be backed by law, pursue a legitimate aim, be proportionate and carry procedural safeguards. The problem this project addresses is twofold. As advocacy, can counsel on both sides build a coherent, authority-backed case on whether an executive FRT scheme like Project Nazar meets that standard? As research, does Indian law — the Constitution, the IT Act, 2000 and the DPDP Act, 2023 — currently provide enough safeguards for biometric surveillance in public spaces, and if not, what should a statute contain?

In scope

• Fundamental-rights challenge under Articles 14, 19(1)(a), 19(1)(d), 21 and 32 of a pari materia constitution.
• Indian Supreme Court precedent on privacy, surveillance, arbitrariness and proportionality from Kharak Singh (1963) to Anuradha Bhasin (2020).
• Interaction with the IT Act, 2000 and the DPDP Act, 2023 (consent, legitimate uses and the State exemption power).
• Comparative reading of UK and US decisions for persuasive value only.

Out of scope

• Technical evaluation of FRT algorithms (the pack relies on published accuracy concerns only as facts in the proposition).
• Criminal-procedure admissibility of FRT matches as evidence.
• Any real police force, real person or real pending case — all facts are fictional.

The project uses a doctrinal research design supported by a comparative method and a small empirical component (court observation).

Research questions

1. Does an executive order satisfy the 'law' requirement for an Article 21 privacy intrusion?
2. Is indiscriminate scanning of everyone in a public place the least restrictive means of finding suspects?
3. What procedural safeguards (retention limits, audit, independent oversight, notice) does the proportionality standard demand?

Source hierarchy — Constitution → statutes (IT Act, 2000; DPDP Act, 2023) → Supreme Court constitution-bench decisions → other Supreme Court and High Court decisions → foreign decisions → reports and journal articles. Authorities lower in the hierarchy are used only to support, never to replace, higher ones.

Timeline (10 weeks)

Citation and integrity — Bluebook 21st edition throughout (the ILI style is acceptable if your faculty prefers it — pick one and never mix). Every draft is run through Turnitin or DrillBit; as good practice the team follows the UGC 2018 similarity ladder and targets ≤ 10%.