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Informist, Tuesday, Jul. 14, 2026

 

NEW DELHI – Ikanoon Software Development Pvt. Ltd., a private platform publishing court decisions on their website IndianKanoon.org, Tuesday moved the division bench of the Delhi High Court against its single judge bench order that had recognised the right to be forgotten. Ikanoon Software argued that the single judge bench's order unduly curtails the principles of open justice and the public's right to access judicial records. The division bench of Chief Justice Chief Justice D.K. Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Karia will hear Ikanoon Software's plea on Jul 21.

 

The single judge bench of Justice Sachin Datta had ruled that the right to be forgotten, which is the right of an individual to seek removal or restriction of personal information from public digital accessibility when it no longer serves any legitimate purpose, comes directly from the recognition of the right to privacy under Article 21 of the Constitution. In a society where digital records are virtually indelible, the ability to seek erasure ensures that informational self-determination remains effective, he said. It protects individuals from perpetual exposure to past events that may no longer bear relevance, while preserving their dignity and autonomy in society, the single judge bench had said.

 

Justice Datta had directed search engines like Google and legal database platforms like IndianKanoon.org to de-index the name-based search functionality with respect to judgments, orders, and news reports highlighted by persons who had since been acquitted by the courts. He was hearing pleas by various persons who had been acquitted of criminal charges, were parties to purely private civil or matrimonial disputes, or whose names appear only incidentally in judicial records of proceedings to which they were not parties. 

 

India currently lacks a comprehensive statutory framework explicitly governing the right to be forgotten, Justice Datta had said. However, the absence of specific legislation does not preclude constitutional courts from recognising and enforcing the right, he said. The right to be forgotten thus reflects the evolution of privacy in response to the permanence of online information, the court said.

 

The single judge bench had said search engines like Google, whose function is entirely automated and algorithmic, do not themselves exercise the fundamental right to speech and free expression and cannot deny persons the right to be forgotten. The single judge bench had said no law authorises Google or any search engine to perpetually index and throw up judicial records in a manner that overrides the individual's fundamental right to informational privacy.  End  

 

Reported by Surya Tripathi 

Edited by Akul Nishant Akhoury

 

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