 "SC, Supreme Court")
The Supreme Court on Wednesday remarked that it would examine the issue of ‘right to be forgotten’ which pertains to securing digital privacy.
A top court bench led by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud stayed an order passed by the Madras High Court related to directing a law portal to remove a certain verdict. The verdict pertained to a person who had been acquitted in a rape case he was accused of.
“Verdicts part of public records, court orders for their removal will have serious ramifications,” the court said while hearing an appeal by the Indian Kanoon law portal against the HC court order.
The court agreed to examine the petition related to ‘right to be forgotten’ moved by the accused who sought to have the judgements containing names removed from public domain.
What is 'right to be forgotten'?
‘Right to be forgotten’ also known as the ‘right to erasure’ deals with individual rights to have a control of the use of their personal data, including photos, videos, etc and have it removed from the records of organisations.
Also Read
The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which outlines data protection laws, protects individual rights in this case under Article 17 of the rules.
It says that individuals have the right to have their personal data erased from the records of the controller without “undue delay”. In this case, this period is considered to be about a month.
The GDPR laws cover instances of data protection of individuals in cases such as where the submitted data is no longer necessary for the purpose that it was originally collected for.
Right to be forgotten always applies in cases such as an individual's personal data being used unlawfully by any organisation or the individual withdrawing their consent for data use.
What is the status in India?
In India, ‘right to be forgotten’ is considered as a part of the right to privacy, which is a fundamental right granted to Indian citizens under Article 21 of the Constitution. However, there are no specific clauses in the Indian laws governing ‘right to be forgotten’.
The Centre had passed the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 last year but is yet to be implemented. A provision of this Act, like its predecessor, mentions a penalty for failing to protect individuals’ data, however, there is no specific mention of ‘right to be forgotten’.
The Centre’s ‘Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021’ includes a process to register a complaint over exposure of personal information and having it removed from the internet if the data has been gathered without the complainant’s consent.
In the key 2017 judgement of declaring ‘right to privacy’ as fundamental, the apex court had acknowledged that the ‘right to be forgotten’ is a facet of the ‘right to privacy’. In a more recent case in July 2022, the court had asked its registry to work out a mechanism to have the digital footprints of a certain involved couple removed from the internet. The couple had gotten into a bitter marital discord and the estranged wife had moved a plea seeking removal of her details from the internet.
