The Delhi High Court on Thursday ordered the removal of social media posts containing video recordings of court proceedings in which Arvind Kejriwal and others had sought the recusal of Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma.
The direction came while hearing a public interest litigation (PIL) that also sought contempt action against Kejriwal, several leaders of the Aam Aadmi Party, and journalist Ravish Kumar for allegedly recording and circulating court proceedings without authorisation.
The High Court directed social media intermediaries and search engines, including Meta, Google and X, to remove all such video content related to proceedings before Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma in the excise policy case, where Kejriwal had appeared and argued in person. The petition also sought action against Congress leader Digvijay Singh and AAP leaders Manish Sisodia, Sanjay Singh, along with Sanjeev Jha, Purandeep Sawhney, Jarnail Singh, Mukesh Ahlawat and Vinay Mishra.
The court issued notices to Kejriwal, multiple AAP leaders, and others on the plea seeking contempt proceedings for sharing such videos in violation of court rules. The bench also asked counsel representing Meta, X, and Google whether it was possible to trace the original source of the recordings.
A division bench comprising Justices V Kameswar Rao and Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora passed the order while hearing the PIL filed by advocate Vaibhav Singh. The bench recorded Meta’s submission that it had already removed certain URLs flagged by the High Court’s Registrar General.
It also noted Google’s submission that some YouTube links had not been removed as they allegedly did not contain recordings of court proceedings. This claim was contested by the petitioner’s counsel, who argued that those links did, in fact, include such content.
The court subsequently directed, “We direct Google to take down proceedings at pages 25 and 26 of the paper-book and file an affidavit regarding its stand.” It further observed that although there was no representation from X, links identified by the petitioner appeared to host recordings, and if so, X must also remove them.
While issuing notices to X (formerly Twitter) and other respondents, including Kejriwal, the court allowed the petitioner to notify intermediaries—Meta, Google, and X—of any additional instances of such content, directing that they act to remove them.
The bench also issued notice to the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, noting that Rule 3(1)(b) of the IT Rules, 2021 obligates intermediaries to make reasonable efforts to prevent users from hosting or sharing content that violates the law. The matter has been listed for further hearing on July 6.
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