Right to be forgotten: Delhi High Court says Meta exempt from directive to de-index judgments

The Delhi High Court on Wednesday clarified that certain directions contained in a May 29 single-judge Bench ruling on the 'right to be forgotten' do not apply to Meta platforms such as Facebook [Meta Platforms vs Mr X & Ors]..A Division Bench of Justice C Hari Shankar and Justice Nivedita Anil Sharma issued the clarification, while dealing with a plea moved by Meta in the matter. By a May 29 ruling, a single-judge Bench of the Court had directed search-engine operators, including Google, to de-index certain judicial records from name-based search results. In this regard, the May 29 judgment had said,“The concerned respondents/ search engine operators/ legal data base platforms are directed to de-index, and disable, across all platforms and domains, name-based search functionality in respect of the judgments/orders/news articles complained of in the petition.”It had also directed law database, Indian Kanoon to restrict name-based searches for these records, although the platform was allowed to continue giving users access to these records through other parameters such as case number, citation, court and date.Indian Kanoon has filed an appeal against this ruling, which is yet to be decided by a Division Bench of the Court. Meta, meanwhile, moved a plea questioning the applicability of the May 29 ruling to its platform Facebook, particularly the directions to de-index judgments and disable name-based searches to certain judicial records. Representing Meta, Senior Advocate Mukul Rohatgi explained that since Facebook is not a search engine, it cannot comply with such de-indexing directions. "I have no grievance with the judgment. I have taken down the URLs. I am Facebook, I am not a search engine ... The judgment is overbroad. I only want a clarification that having removed the complained URLs, nothing applies to me and this matter can be disposed of," he said. .“Nobody accesses you Facebook) now; you are outdated. You (Rohatgi) will never be outdated but Facebook is outdated," Justice Shankar said in a lighter vein. .The Court, however, acknowledged that the earlier directions for de-indexing certain search results to judicial records are irrelevant for Meta/ Facebook. It also recorded that the opposing parties did not object to such a clarification being made.It, therefore, closed Meta's plea after recording that the May 29 de-indexing directives do not apply to Facebook/ Meta. .Senior Advocate Vivek Reddy also represented Meta, along with a team from Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas comprising advocates Varun Pathak, Amee Rana, Yash Karunakaran, Sana Banyal, Vishesh Sharma, Prasidhi Agrawal, Ravi Shankar Pandey, and Shivam Chaudhary..In the May 29 judgment, the Court had recognised the right to be forgotten as an integral facet of the fundamental right to privacy under Article 21 of the Constitution.A single judge Bench of the High Court had passed the order on a batch of petitions seeking the removal of content containing personal details of the petitioners in the coverage of legal proceedings.Apart from the removal of the news stories on such matters, the petitioners also sought the takedown of related court orders from legal platforms like Indian Kanoon.In a detailed May 29 judgment, Justice Sachin Datta laid down a framework for deciding requests to de-index or remove personal information from judicial records that are uploaded online.The Court issued directions to ensure that names and personal identifiers are concealed from judicial orders made available online, while the judgment’s reasoning, findings and legal conclusions would remain publicly accessible.Unredacted versions would continue to be preserved in court records and remain available to courts, parties and authorities for legitimate legal purposes, the Court had added at the time. The single judge Bench ruling further said that once an order is issued to mask/ anonymise personal details from a judicial order, search engines and legal databases must de-index the judgment from name-based searches. The Court's Division Bench has now clarified that this particular directive is not applicable to Meta.