‘I’ve already deleted 80 judgments’: Why Indian Kanoon is challenging ‘right to be forgotten’ order

“All legal websites have full free search facilities. This is being cited as a precedent, I’m having serious trouble. I have been asked to take down judgments by various courts. I have already deleted 80 judgments. They don’t include any other legal websites, I’m the only one who has to remove all judgments. This is a small website with three people employed,” Datar added.

The May ruling

Disposing of 36 petitions by various individuals on May 29, a single-judge had directed for de-indexing of various judgments involving these individuals from search engines.

It also directed Indian Kanoon to restrict name-based search functionality on its platform, while making it clear that “judgments and orders shall remain accessible on Indian Kanoon by case number, citation, court details and date”.

‘Right to privacy does not protect court records’

Indian Kanoon has sought that the single judge’s verdict be set aside and that the operation of the verdict be stayed in the interim.

It termed the single judge’s direction an “overbroad and impractical direction”, stating that right to privacy does not grant “an unqualified right to be forgotten from historical or judicial records”, and “does not extend to protect an individual from publications of public records, including court records”.

It also contested the “arbitrary standard” fixed by the court for deindexing and disabling name-based searches. The single-judge had ruled that such disabling should be done for information which is “no longer relevant” or “does not serve a legitimate public purpose”.

The legal website emphasised that the censure of particular names from search results “ought to be first addressed at the point of origin,” that is, court registries.

Court registries are responsible for making court records public on their respective websites. They can be directed for masking or redaction of names/parties, Indian Kanoon contended.

Impact on usability of Indian Kanoon

Indian Kanoon argues that if individual litigants are given the impetus to seek deletion of their names, it would, in effect, also imply a redaction of case names from Indian Kanoon’s database.

This, it said, will have a direct adverse impact on the usability and utility of the portal itself.

Private legal databases such as Indian Kanoon exist “because most official court websites are poor, slow and unreliable”, with many such websites devoid of advanced free-search options, riddled with querying limitations, varied case-type abbreviations, inconsistent formats across judgments — all of which may hinder legal research and access, Indian Kanoon submitted in its appeals.