The Right to Financial Forgetting: Constitutional Privacy and the Retention of Customer Data by Banks in India

AbstractBanking in India has changed quickly because of computers, mobile phones, internet banking, digital payments, and online lending. A bank can now collect and store many details about a customer. These details can include identity documents, addresses, account information, transaction records, loan information, contact details, device information, and records created during digital services. Such information is useful for safe banking, fraud control, taxation, anti-money laundering work, and legal compliance. At the same time, keeping personal financial information for a very long period can create privacy risks. This paper studies the idea of a “right to financial forgetting” in India. The phrase is used in this paper as a proposed way of thinking about limited deletion, restriction, or removal of unnecessary financial information. That a customer can simply ask a bank to destroy every old record. Banks have legal duties to keep many records for fixed periods and sometimes for longer when a legal or regulatory reason exists. Therefore, the main issue is how privacy and record retention can work together. The paper connects this issue with Article 21 of the Constitution of India and the constitutions right to privacy recognised by the Supreme Court in Justice K. S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) v. Union of India. It also studies the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, RBI requirements, KYC rules, anti-money laundering needs, and the practical interests of banks and customers. The paper argues that financial privacy should not be treated as a choice between complete secrecy and unlimited storage. A better approach is controlled retention: keep information when there is a clear reason, protect it while it is kept, review it when the purpose ends, and delete or restrict information when law no longer requires its continued storage. The study is doctrinal and descriptive. It uses legislation, RBI material, constitutional principles, judicial decisions, and secondary academic ideas. The paper finally suggests a simple model for “financial forgetting” based on purpose, necessity, legal duty, retention period, security, review, and customer access. KeywordsFinancial privacy; banking data; Article 21; right to privacy; right to be forgotten; customer data; KYC; RBI; Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023; data retention; banking and finance; India.