The Delhi High Court, in its recent judgement of Laksh Vir Singh Yadav v. Union of India, stated that the right to be forgotten is an integral part of the Right to Privacy guaranteed under Article 21 of the Indian Constitution. This is a significant hurdle to overcome; however, the guidelines and directions issued by the Delhi High Court chart a possible way of achieving what one thought unachievable due to the never-dying digital footprint of an individual.
In Laksh Vir Singh Yadav v. Union of India, the High Court categorically held that disputes that formally resolved through acquittals, discharges, quashings, or mutual settlements, as well as to individuals involved in purely private matrimonial and civil conflicts could be made subject to the Right to be Forgotten.
What Is the Right to Be Forgotten in India?
Informational privacy i.e an individual’s right to exercise control over their own digital existence has been declared an important facet of the Right to Privacy under Article 21 of the Constitution in the recent judgement. The right to be forgotten becomes pertinent in the digital era, where a person’s most harrowing experiences can be accessed at the click of a mouse. The right to be forgotten ensures that a person is not perpetually defined by past unfortunate events especially if proceedings against such person have ended in acquittals, discharges or mutual settlements.
The landmark case of Justice K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India brought the Right to Privacy within India’s ambit but the first significant case that dealt with an individual’s right to be forgotten was Jorawar Singh Mundy v. Union of India wherein the Court evaluated an individual’s right to privacy with respect to the Right to Information given to the public. The Court came to the conclusion that online search engines must delete such data which is no longer needed and relevant. This right to be forgotten was further upheld in Zulfiqar Ahmad Khan v. Quintillion Business Media (P) Ltd. when unfounded #MeToo allegations against a person were ordered to be removed by the Court.
That being said, any person whose actions cannot be erased due to threat of public interest is neither entitled nor awarded with this Right to be Forgotten. Therefore, though the right exists, it must be balanced with care & due diligence. The judgement merely calls for an erasure of person’s personal information by de-indexing specific links from name-based search engines and turning off name-search functionalities on legal tech repositories.
Though there exists a legislative lacuna governing the right to be forgotten, the Courts have adeptly interpreted the Constitutional guarantees to extend to the right to be forgotten. Justice Sachin Datta held that no person deserves to have their name permanently affixed to a dispute of a harrowing nature and have it follow them till the end of time.
Passive vs. Active Data Processing Roles
The judgement of K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India is a pertinent judgement whenever evaluating rights under the ambit Article 21’s ambit. So it is here. The judgement had much clairvoyance in its decision wherein the Right to Privacy was evolved & therein, Justice Sanjay Kishan kaul also mentioned the Right to be Forgotten as a subset extension of the Right to Privacy.
The primary defense against such erasure was the discrepancy between passive & active data processing sites. Search engines such as Google & IndianKanoon levied the argument that once a dispute happens in the public sphere, the Right to Privacy is offset in the interest of justice. They alleged that the public’s right to information under Article 19 superseded the person involved in dispute’s right to erasure. Furthermore, they argued that search engines like Google merely function as a library index wherein they categorize information available freely on the internet without creating or modifying the underlying content. They asserted that forcing them to delist content amounts to a form of private censorship that undermines transparency and distorts collective public memory.
The Delhi High Court, however, in the instant case of Laksh Vir Singh dismantled these arguments categorically and instead held these search engines to be active actors and data processing engines rather than passive actors. The court observed that by actively collecting, indexing, organizing, ranking, and serving personal data in response to name-based queries, commercial search engines perform an active data-processing role. The Court also held that by algorithmic amplification & targeted advertisement on the part of these platforms, they derived substantial commercial revenue and were therefore involved more actively in the disbursement of the content. Often, these search engines capitalised the initial arrest stages in a dispute while these engines did not equally amplify the counterpart acquittals. Therefore, the search engines could not hide under the guise of functioning as mere passive actors.
The Test of Proportionality
The Court, while evolving the Right to be Forgotten, has treaded with extreme caution and has evolved a test of proportionality wherein it has held that though the Right to be forgotten is not absolute, it may be read into if factors such as nature of information, time elapsed since the event, public or private role of the individual, and final outcome of the legal dispute warrants the same.
The presumption of innocence is a substantive guarantee under Article 21 of the Constitution. If a competent court formally acquits an accused, discharges them, or quashes the criminal proceedings, that legal determination must be given practical effect in the digital domain. Allowing an unestablished accusation to dominate an individual’s digital identity permanently creates an unacceptable legal incongruity. The court recognized that the intimate details of family life, marriage, and personal relationships lie at the core of the protected zone of privacy.
Conclusion
The right to be forgotten, as articulated in the Laksh Vir Singh Yadav judgment, represents a crucial step toward humanizing the digital environment. It establishes the constitutional principle that while society has a right to remember, individuals have an equal right to rehabilitate their lives and move beyond their past legal travails. The Laksh Vir Singh Yadav judgment marks a pivotal evolution in Indian constitutional jurisprudence, offering a necessary counterweight to the relentless memory of search engines. By sanctioning de-indexing and search-disabling mechanisms rather than outright content destruction, the Court struck a delicate balance between public interest and individual dignity. Ultimately, the decision affirms that while public record, data protection compliance and collective memory hold value, the right to personal rehabilitation and a clean slate remains essential to human dignity. No individual should be condemned to carry the burden of a concluded legal dispute into perpetuity.
Author: Mahima Rathor, Associate
Co-Author: Rea Agrawal, Intern
