Welcome to The Esya Dispatch, a weekly snapshot of the policy debates shaping India’s digital economy. Each edition brings together key developments in technology policy, from platform governance and AI regulation to data protection and competition — along with the Esya Centre’s perspective on what they mean for innovation, businesses, and users.
Here’s a quick recap of two key tech policy developments from the past week:
1. Indian Kanoon challenges Del HC decision on right to be forgotten
Indian Kanoon, a legal database platform, has challenged a decision by the Delhi High Court which recognized the right to be forgotten as a part of the right to privacy under Article 21 of the Constitution. In this case, the Delhi High Court directed Indian Kanoon to de-index several petitioners’ personal identifiers from search results related to certain judgments and orders. It also allowed the petitioners to approach courts to mask their personal identifiers in publicly available versions of the judgments and orders concerned. The petitioners comprised a range of individuals, such as those acquitted of criminal charges, those against whom FIRs had been quashed, and those involved in private civil and matrimonial disputes before various forums.
In its appeal, Indian Kanoon argued that the Delhi High Court’s recognition of the right to be forgotten unduly curtails the principle of open justice and the public’s right to access judicial records. It added that by allowing de-indexing or masking of personal information when it is “no longer relevant”, the decision restricts free speech on grounds that go beyond those permitted under Article 19(2) of the Constitution. Further, Indian Kanoon noted that it had been arbitrarily singled out among other legal databases and added that since name-based searches are crucial for legal research, the decision infringes on its right to practice any occupation, trade or business under Article 19(1)(g) of the Constitution.
ESYA'S TAKE: Disabling name-based searches could impose significant compliance costs on services like Indian Kanoon, which are built around extensive indexing. Such requirements may also affect the users of these services, who often look for cases by using party names. Although legal databases allow users to research cases in other ways (e.g. by using features like topic-wise search or keyword searches), these methods often generate a long list of results and make it more difficult and time-consuming for users to identify the specific case they are looking for. Additionally, since Indian Kanoon is one of the few legal databases that is freely available to the public, it may also be used by non-lawyers, who may not know how to research cases using their official citation. In this way, the Delhi High Court’s de-indexing requirements may increase operational costs for legal databases and create considerable friction for their users.
However, the increasing integration of AI into legal databases is also a relevant factor when assessing the implications of such de-indexing requirements under Article 19(1)(g). For example, Indian Kanoon’s own website includes an AI-powered chatbot which allows users to ask a specific legal query and provides relevant case law to answer that query. Over time, such features may fundamentally transform how users look for cases and render name-based searches less integral to the functioning of legal databases. Thus, the implications of the right to be forgotten for legal databases’ rights under Article 19(1)(g) may require assessment in light of these evolving technological developments.
2. Del HC orders removal of Kala Hiran teaser in personality rights case
Recently, the Delhi High Court ordered the removal of the teaser of a film called Kala Hiran: The Battle for Legacy after actor Salman Khan alleged that it violates his personality rights. The film is purportedly about the trial of a superstar actor who is accused of killing a blackbuck. Salman Khan’s lawyers stated that the teaser depicts the trial of an actor named Ayan Khan, which closely resembles his name, and contains dialogues that are associated with his films. They added that it also contains references to specific locations and communities associated with the blackbuck shooting incident, which is pending before various High Courts. Thus, they argued that the teaser commercially exploits attributes of Salman Khan’s personality and impinges on his personality rights.
In its order, the Delhi High Court observed that the right to personality is an intrinsic facet of the right to privacy under Article 21 of the Constitution. It held that the right to personality includes the right to determine how one’s persona is commercially exploited and added that the defendants cannot exploit Salman Khan’s name, mannerisms and other distinctive attributes for commercial gain and tarnish his reputation. Thus, it issued an interim order directing the removal of the teaser from various platforms.
Esya’s take: The Delhi High Court’s interim order is overbroad because it extends the ambit of personality rights protection to elements that are far beyond a public figure’s persona. In India, leading personality rights cases have held that these rights protect aspects like an individual’s name, voice, image, manner of speaking or signatures, which form a part of her unique persona. However, the interim order suggests that merely depicting events associated with a public figure may implicate personality rights, even if the content does not depict their name, image, or voice in any way. This risks transforming personality rights into a mechanism for public figures to control larger narratives about them, instead of simply protecting them from the unauthorized exploitation of their persona. It also affects content creators’ rights to free speech under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution, because it exposes them to personality rights claims for simply making content based on real-life events.