HC orders takedown of recusal hearing clips; issues notice to Arvind Kejriwal on contempt plea

New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Thursday ordered the takedown of social media posts containing videos of court proceedings wherein former Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and others had sought recusal of Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma.

The court passed the order in a PIL which also sought contempt action against Kejriwal and other leaders of the party for allegedly unauthorisedly recording and circulating videos of the proceedings before Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma on social media.


In its order, a division bench comprising Justices V Kameswar Rao and Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora noted Meta's submission that it had taken down some URLs communicated to it by the High Court's Registrar General.

Issuing a notice to X and other respondents, including Arvind Kejriwal, the high court granted liberty to the petitioner to inform other respondents like Meta and Google that if he finds proceedings on social media, the same be given to them and they will take it down.

The high court, while issuing the notice to the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, further noted that Rule 3(1)(b) IT Rules 2021 states that the intermediary has as an obligation to take reasonable efforts by itself or to cause users of its computer resource to not host, display, upload, publish, transmit, store or share any information that violates the law.

During Thursday's hearing, the counsel for petitioner Vaibhav Singh contended that there were video conferencing rules governing the court proceedings, which states that unless there is express permission of the court, there cannot be any recording or any publication of court proceedings. The case will come up for resumed hearing on July 6.