India Kanoon Challenges Delhi HC's 'Right to be Forgotten' Ruling, Cites Open Justice Concerns
Legal database platform India Kanoon has approached the Delhi High Court challenging a recent judgment that recognised the 'right to be forgotten', arguing that the ruling failed to balance the right to information and the principle of open justice.
The appeal was heard by a Bench of Chief Justice D.K. Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Karia on Tuesday. Advocate Naman Kumar, appearing for the platform, sought a short adjournment due to lawyers abstaining from work. The court listed the matter for further hearing on July 21.
The appeal challenges a single-judge judgment of May 29, which allowed individuals to seek removal of personal information from search engine results, including legal databases, if such information is 'no longer relevant or serves no legitimate public purpose'. The judgment also laid down a framework for de-indexing judicial records from search engines and masking personal identifiers from publicly accessible court records.
In its plea, India Kanoon argued that the single-judge ruling has created an arbitrary standard for de-indexing and disabling name-based searches. 'Litigants claiming 'privacy' from search engines and legal databases have to prove that the information contained therein is no longer relevant and serves no legitimate public purpose. However, the factors of 'relevance' and 'legitimate public purpose' are arbitrary, broad, and unclear,' the plea stated.
India Kanoon further argued that judicial and public records serve a continuing public function and cannot be obliterated merely based on individual requests. It contended that the Supreme Court's landmark decision in K.S. Puttaswamy vs Union of India, which recognised the right to privacy as an intrinsic part of the right to life, did not establish a 'right to be forgotten' in the Indian context. 'The mere fact that there was a brief discussion by way of obiter in Puttaswamy about the right to be forgotten is insufficient to be the legal basis for extending a 'right to be forgotten' to individual litigants,' the plea said.
India Kanoon is a free legal database that provides access to Indian laws, reported and unreported judgments, and daily orders of the Supreme Court, High Courts, and various tribunals. Its users commonly enter party names to find and apply cases, including litigants, students, researchers, lawyers, and judges. The platform argued that allowing individual litigants to seek deletion or redaction of their names from case names would directly impair the usability and utility of the legal search engine, thereby affecting its business freedom.
The single-judge ruling came in response to over 30 petitions filed by individuals, including those acquitted of criminal charges, parties to matrimonial disputes, persons whose proceedings were quashed or settled, and individuals whose names appeared incidentally in judicial records. They argued that the continued availability and name-based searchability of judicial records bearing their names in the digital public domain causes disproportionate and continuing harm to their reputations, dignity, and life prospects.
The single-judge ruling held that persons who have been acquitted, discharged, or whose proceedings have been quashed are entitled to have that legal determination reflected in their digital identity.
