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Informist, Wednesday, Jul. 1, 2026

 

NEW DELHI – The Delhi High Court Wednesday observed that public figures such as politicians, who hold positions of power, must accept being at the receiving end of satirical humour as a necessary and inevitable aspect of their profession, though unpleasant. The high court refused to order Meta Platforms Inc. and other intermediary platforms to remove satirical content against Bharatiya Janata Party leader Raghav Chadha, relating to the politician switching from the Aam Aadmi Party. However, posts with explicit content, which was profane and vulgar in nature and fell outside the purview of harmless satirical humor, would be removed by the intermediary platforms, said the court.

 

Humour about change in political party alliances, governance, and policies are a part and parcel of politics, said Justice Subramonium Prasad. Any action by a politician belonging to any political party will, in most, if not all circumstances, invite criticism from, upset, or create turmoil among the general public or members of rival political parties, which may at times be expressed in the form of satirical humour, said Justice Prasad. However, that does not automatically make such content offensive or defamatory, he said.

 

The high court said that the majority of the allegedly defamatory content appears to be satirical expressions of Chadha's decisions in the political sphere, and such decisions are likely to attract both bouquets and brickbats at the same time. As observed in a catena of judgments, a public figure should not be so thin-skinned so as to complain about any criticism of his decisions and such criticism ought to be viewed with humility, said the court.

 

It said that it was in no way or manner endorsing the use of artificial intelligence to produce deepfake videos, morphed images, when employed to harm the dignity of an individual which would strike at the very root of their fundamental rights guaranteed under the Constitution of India. However, at least till the time most of such content is not regulated by a stringent legislation, it becomes a judicial duty upon receipt of grievances such as those in the present case by Chadha, to examine whether the use of artificial intelligence has reached the threshold of infringing upon an individual's fundamental right to dignity or not, said the court.

 

The case has its genesis in Chadha discovering various derogatory, demeaning and malicious campaigns orchestrated by unknown infringers, who allegedly used artificial intelligence and machine learning to generate hyper-realistic audio-visual deep-fake content wherein the plaintiff's face and mannerisms were being duplicated to portray him in negative light. Chadha said these campaigns specifically commenced after he, along with several other members of Parliament from the Aam Aadmi Party, defected to the Bharatiya Janata Party. Consequently, Chadha moved the high court and sought removal of content that was defamatory in nature.  End

 

Reported by Surya Tripathi

Edited by Avishek Dutta

 

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