UPSC Prelims 2021— Question 29

The Supreme Court in K.S. Puttaswamy (2017) recognized privacy as a constitutionally protected right, principally grounded in Article 21 and the broader guarantees of Part III. Articles 15, 19 and 29 protect other specific rights, though privacy may intersect with several Fundamental Rights. The direct constitutional article identified in the question is Article 21. The final answer-key position for Set C identifies option C as the correct option. Option A — Article 15 — is not correct because it does not satisfy the specific condition tested in the question; it represents an alternative that is contradicted, incomplete, or less precise than the accepted answer. Option B — Article 19 — is not correct because it does not satisfy the specific condition tested in the question; it represents an alternative that is contradicted, incomplete, or less precise than the accepted answer. Option C — Article 21 — is correct because it is the alternative that matches the constitutional, historical, geographical, scientific or economic principle established above. Option D — Article 29 — is not correct because it does not satisfy the specific condition tested in the question; it represents an alternative that is contradicted, incomplete, or less precise than the accepted answer. For PYQ interpretation, the distinction between the correct alternative and merely related facts is important. UPSC often places plausible distractors beside the precise statement that matches the underlying rule, chronology, definition or empirical relationship. The answer should therefore be read against the exact wording of the question rather than against a broadly related fact.