Meghalaya HC: Forced Inoculation Is A Violation Of Fundamental Right

Background Facts

• After learning that the state had compelled merchants, vendors, and cab drivers get themselves vaccinated against Covid-19 before restarting their business, the court filed a suo moto public interest lawsuit.
• Meghalaya's health department commissioned a research from the Indian Institute of Public Health in Shillong after the state's health agency struggled to vaccinate even its healthcare personnel. According to the preliminary findings, one of the key reasons of reluctance is "messages on social media."
• The phenomena of people declining to get immunised despite the availability of a safe and efficient vaccine is complicated and influenced by a number of factors. It's made considerably more problematic by the exceptional conditions and rushed deadlines under which the Covid-19 vaccines were created. As a result, specialists believe that people's anxiety is natural.
• Apart from the natural anxieties that exist across the country, Meghalaya appears to be dealing with anti-vaccination propaganda from fringe Christian groups. The vaccine has been linked to an evil energy by fringe Christian groups. According to Reverend KyrsoiborPyrtuh of the Khasi-Jaintia Presbyterian Church in Meghalaya, “there is this concept among certain fringe elements that the vaccine is also part of some type of controlling mechanism.”
• Vaccine apprehension was fuelled in Meghalaya's Khasi and Jaintia hills, according to some, by a "combination of scientific and religious" misinformation.
• Anti-vaccine WhatsApp messages invoking American right-wing conspiracy theories, according to residents, have been circulating in the state since last year. Anti-vaccination movements have a lengthy history in the United States, with many of them closely related to evangelical groups. Such organisations have also thwarted the country's Covid-19 vaccination campaign. As a result, in many places of the United States, shots are going unused.

Court’s Observation and Order

The Meghalaya High Court has ruled that compulsory or coercive vaccination is a violation of the fundamental right to livelihood.

The very basic goal of the benefit associated to vaccination is vitiated when it is forced or made mandatory by coercive techniques. It infringes on fundamental rights in general, particularly when it comes to the right to a means of livelihood that allows a person to live.

The bench referenced multiple court judgments to emphasise that forced vaccination is prohibited. The bench's decision also brought up issues of physical autonomy.

“Whether to subject oneself to an intrusion of one's body, even if of minor intensity, such as through a needle, concerns issues of personal and bodily autonomy and bodily integrity, similar to abortion rights, non-sterilization rights, or even sex reassignment surgeries, irrespective of the consequences the individual might be inviting,” the report stated.

Following the court judgement, the state principal secretary stated that the current vaccine compliance directives would be changed.

What is your view on the Meghalaya High Court ruling that compulsory or coercive vaccination is a violation of the fundamental right to livelihood? Tell us in the comments below.