Right to be forgotten is part of privacy rights, rules Delhi High Court in landmark judgment

New Delhi: In a landmark judgment, the Delhi High Court has recognised an individual's 'right to be forgotten' as an integral facet of the fundamental right to privacy under Article 21 of the Constitution. It said that search engine operators and legal database platforms such as Google and Indian Kanoon.org will have to de-index and disable an individual's 'name-based search functionality' in respect of judgments, orders and news articles.

The court said that search engines like Google, whose function is entirely automated and algorithmic, do not themselves exercise the fundamental right to speech and expression and cannot deny the right to be forgotten to persons.

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Justice Sachin Datta held that individuals may seek the removal or masking of personal information from online judicial records where continued accessibility causes disproportionate harm to their privacy, dignity and reputation.

It said that no law authorises Google or any search engine to perpetually index and surface judicial records in a manner that overrides the individual's fundamental right to informational privacy. The Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, obliges intermediaries to comply with court orders directing removal or restriction of content, it said.

The HC was hearing pleas by various persons who had been acquitted of criminal charges or were parties to purely private civil or matrimonial disputes or persons whose names appear incidentally in judicial records of proceedings to which they were not parties.