Politicians must be thick-skinned; satire about changing party not defamatory: Delhi HC in Raghav Chadha case

The Delhi High Court on Wednesday refused to pass a sweeping order for the removal satirical posts against Raghav Chadha over his defection from Aam Aadmi Party (AA) to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). .Justice Subramonium Prasad said that humour about changing political party alliances, governance and policies is part of politics and and critical content about such matters cannot always be dubbed defamatory. "This Court observes that humor about change in political party alliances, governance, policies, etc. are a part and parcel of politics. Any action by a politician belonging to any political party will, in most, if not all circumstances, invite criticism from, upset, or create turmoil amongst, the general public or members from rival political parties, which may at times be expressed in the form of satirical humor. However, that does not automatically make such content offensive or defamatory,” the ruling states. He added that public figures assuming positions of power must “accept being at the receiving end of the satirical humour as a necessary and inevitable aspect of their profession, though unpleasant”.The Court made the observations in its judgment denying a blanket direction for removal of defamatory content and protecting the personality rights of MP Raghav ChadhaHowever, the Court ordered removal of content flagged by Chadha in six documents and which the Court found to be objectionable..The order was passed after Chadha approached the High Court alleging that unidentified persons used AI and machine learning to generate hyper-realistic deepfake videos, morphed images and voice-cloned content portraying him in a negative light. He had sought protection of his personality rights and removal of several social media posts, contained in as many as 52 documents annexed to his suit. Chadha claimed that the campaign began after he and several other AAP parliamentarians defected to the BJP..A public figure should not be so thin-skinned so as to complain about any criticism of his decisions and such criticism ought to be viewed with humility.Delhi High Court .Justice Prasad made a prima facie observation that Chadha’s suit does not pertain to the protection of personality rights in any manner. However, the Court noted that Chadha’s lawyers had said that they would not press for protection of personality rights but only for the defamatory content. The Court then examined the 52 documents annexed by Chadha and ruled that most of them relate primarily to political decisions taken by Chadha. “Majority of the allegedly defamatory content appears to be satirical expressions of the Plaintiff’s decisions in the political sphere, and such decisions are likely attract both bouquets and brickbats at the same time. As observed in a catena of judgments, a public figure should not be so thin-skinned so as to complain about any criticism of his decisions and such criticism ought to be viewed with humility,” the Court observed. However, it found that six documents contain explicit content and those were profane and vulgar in nature and fell outside the purview of harmless satirical humour.Therefore, it ordered the removal of the content in those six documents. "The Defendants No. 2 and 4 are directed to provide the Plaintiff with Basic Subscriber Information (BSI), IP logs of the accounts associated with the content mentioned in Documents No. 2, 8, 9, 11, 25 and 40 within a period of two weeks from the date of this Order," Justice Prasad said. The Court added that it does not endorse the use of AI-generated deepfakes or morphed content that harms an individual's dignity. "In this context, this Court believes that at least till the time most of such content is not regulated by a stringent legislation, it becomes a judicial duty upon receipt of grievances such as those in the present Suit, to examine whether the use of AI has reached the threshold of infringing upon an individual’s fundamental right to dignity or not. Needless to state, a fair balance is to be struck with an individual’s freedom of speech and expression which is also granted under the Constitution of India," the Court observed. .[Read Judgment]