The Delhi High Court on Thursday directed taken down of social media posts containing videos of court proceedings wherein AAP Supremo Arvind Kejriwal and others had sought recusal of Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma.
The court passed the order in a PIL which also sought contempt action against Kejriwal, other leaders of the party as well as journalist Ravish Kumar for “unauthorizedly” recording and circulating videos of proceedings before Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma on social media.
HC ordered social media intermediaries and search engines including Facebook, Google and X to take down/ remove all videos recordings of court proceedings before Justice Swarana Kanta sharma in the excise policy case in which Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief Arvind Kejriwal had appeared and argued in person. Apart from Kejriwal and Ravish Kumar, the petitioner sought action against Congress leader Digvijay Singh, AAP's Manish Sisodia, Sanjay Singh as well as Sanjeev Jha, Purandeep Sawhney, Jarnail Singh, Mukesh Ahlawat and Vinay Mishra.
The Court also issued notices to Arvind Kejriwal, several leaders of AAP and others on the plea seeking contempt of court action against them for publishing such videos in violation of Delhi High Court's rules. The Bench asked counsel for Meta, X and Google whether it is possible to identify who recorded such video first.
A Division Bench of Justices V Kameswar Rao and Justice Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora passed the order on a public interest litigation (PIL) petition filed by advocate Vaibhav Singh.The bench in its order noted Meta's submission that it had taken down some URLs communicated to it by High Court's Registrar General.
It further noted Google's submission that posts against links from YouTube have not been removed as they don't have recording of court proceedings. This was contested by the petitioner Vaibhav Singh's counsel who said that even those links have proceedings.
The court thus directed:"We direct Google to take down proceedings at pages 25, 26 of paperbook. It shall also file an affidavit in respect of its stand. Though there is no appearance for X, we note that petitioner has at pages 26 and 27 shown certain links which as per him has recording of proceedings. If that be so, X shall take down proceedings against those links".
Issuing notice to respondent 4 (X formerly Twitter) and other respondents including Kejriwal, the court granted liberty to petitioner to inform respondents 2-4 (Meta, Google, X) that if he finds proceedings on social media, the same be given to them and they will take it down.
Issuing notice to Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology the court further noted that Rule 3(1)(b) IT Rules 2021 states that intermediary has as an obligation to take reasonable efforts by itself or to cause users of its computer resource to not host, display, upload, publish, transmit, store or share any information that violates law. The Court listed matter for hearing next on July 6.
Follow us
