Why in news?

The Delhi High Court in a recent landmark order upheld the "Right to be Forgotten". It directed Google, other search engines, and Indian Kanoon to disable name-based searches for certain judgments, orders, and news articles.

The order applies mainly to cases ending in acquittal, discharge, quashing, or settlement. It also covers cases of a purely private nature.

The platforms were directed to comply within two weeks.

What’s in Today’s Article?

• What is the Right to be Forgotten?
• Background: The Cases That Prompted This Order
• The Court's Key Findings
• Specific Directions Issued By The Court
• What the Court Did Not Decide?
• The Privacy Framework — Constitutional Underpinning

What is the Right to be Forgotten?

• Right to be Forgotten is the right of an individual to request that certain information about them — particularly old, irrelevant, or harmful information — be removed or hidden from search engine results, so that it does not continue to haunt them indefinitely.
• It does not mean erasing the past — it simply means ensuring that a casual internet search does not automatically surface damaging information about a person who has already been legally exonerated.

Background: The Cases That Prompted This Order

• The court decided 38 petitions — the oldest dating back to 2016 — filed by individuals including:
  • Persons acquitted of criminal charges.
  • Parties to purely private civil or matrimonial disputes.
  • Persons whose names appear incidentally in judicial records of proceedings to which they were not even parties.
• The petitioners argued that continued name-based searchability of their judicial records on platforms like Indian Kanoon causes disproportionate and continuing harm to their reputations, dignity, and life prospects — far exceeding any legitimate public interest served by such accessibility.

The Court's Key Findings

• On Search Engines Having No Legal Authority - The High Court held made clear that search engines have no legal basis to maintain unlimited name-based access to judicial records involving acquitted persons or private matters.
• On the Disproportionality of Permanent Digital Searchability - The right to be forgotten reflects the evolution of privacy in response to the permanence of online information.
• On the Distorted Picture Created by Search Results - The court said that an acquittal should not remain hidden while details of an arrest appear prominently in search results. It observed that repeatedly highlighting a person's arrest, accusation, or legal troubles without proper context is unfair.
• On Informational Self-Determination - The court noted that digital records can remain online for a very long time. It said people should have the ability to seek erasure of outdated personal information. This helps individuals avoid permanent exposure to past events that may no longer be relevant to their present lives.

Specific Directions Issued By The Court

• To Google and Search Engines — De-index name-based search results linking to judgments, orders, or news articles in cases of acquittal, discharge, quashing, settlement, or private disputes.
  • De-indexing simply prevents a person's name from appearing as a search result when someone types their name into Google or searches by name on Indian Kanoon.
  • The judgment or court order continues to exist in full — on the court's own website, on Indian Kanoon, and on any other platform that hosts it.
  • De-indexing is NOT the same as deletion.
• To Indian Kanoon — Restrict name-based search functionality within the platform for records of petitioners who appeared before the Delhi HC — while keeping judgments fully accessible by case number, citation, court details, and date.
• To Courts — The High Court prescribed parameters for courts to decide on masking of names and personal identifiers in judicial records in cases of acquittal, discharge, or quashing — when sought by any party involved.
• To Petitioners — Those granted de-indexing relief may additionally seek masking from the original court that rendered the judgment.

What the Court Did Not Decide?

• The court explicitly limited its scope — it only dealt with de-indexing from name-based search results and restricting name-based search functionality within Indian Kanoon.
• It did not consider complete removal or takedown of entire judgments from Indian Kanoon or any other legal database.
• The Supreme Court is separately dealing with the larger question of whether entire judgments can be taken down from Indian Kanoon.

The Privacy Framework — Constitutional Underpinning

• The Right to be Forgotten in India flows from the right to privacy recognised as a fundamental right under Article 21 (Right to Life and Personal Liberty) by the Supreme Court in the landmark Justice K.S. Puttaswamy vs Union of India (2017) judgment.
• India currently lacks a comprehensive statutory framework governing the right to be forgotten — the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 touches on related concepts but does not fully codify this right.
• The Delhi HC's order fills this gap through judicial interpretation — holding that the right to informational privacy and informational self-determination must be actively protected even in the absence of specific legislation.