Claiming the “right to be forgotten”, reality show celebrity Ashutosh Kaushik on Thursday sought a direction from the Delhi High Court to the Center and Google to take down some of his videos, photos and articles from various online platforms as they have “right to be forgotten”. harmful effect on their lives”.
Justice Rekha Palli issued the notice and asked the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Google LLC, Press Council of India and the Center for Electronic Media Monitoring to respond to the plea that the petitioners had “right to privacy” and “right to be forgotten”. was calling. ”.
The court asked the authorities to file a reply within four weeks and listed the matter for further hearing in December.
Kaushik, who won MTV Hero Honda Roadies 5.0 in 2007 and the second season of Bigg Boss in 2008, directed the Center to take immediate steps to protect his reputation and dignity by removing his videos, photos and other related articles from various online platforms. demanded. Which is being facilitated by Google because the same is having a detrimental effect on his life and personal liberty.
The petition states that ‘right to be forgotten’ refers to a person’s claim to delete certain data so that third persons can no longer trace them and it enables the individual to silence past events of his life which are now are not happening.
“Thus, the ‘right to be forgotten’ gives individuals the right to remove information, videos or photos about themselves from certain Internet records so that search engines cannot find them.”
The petition states that although the Constitution of India does not explicitly recognize the ‘right to be forgotten’, the Supreme Court has held that the ‘right to life’ includes individual liberty and thus, the right to privacy is guaranteed under Article 21. has been removed from.
It states that the ‘right to be forgotten’ is in consonance with the right to privacy, which the Supreme Court has termed as an integral part of Article 21 (right to life) of the Constitution.
Advocate Amit George, representing Kaushik, submitted that whenever his name is searched on the internet, pictures relating to his past life keep showing up on various search engines including Google and all such posts, videos and other posts from the court. Requested to remove the photo. Him.
Senior advocate Arvind Nigam, representing Google, said the right to be forgotten is not a law in the country as of now.
The petition said that Kaushik’s invaluable contribution to the television and big screen industry has earned him the admiration, love and appreciation of people across India.
“However, in spite of achieving outstanding success in the silver screen industry, the petitioner under deep anguish had to suffer immense psychological pain for his petty acts, which were wrongfully committed a decade ago as the recorded videos, photographs, Articles of the same are available on various search engines/online platforms,” said the petition filed through advocates Akshat Bajpayee, Ishani Sharma and Shreya Gupta.
The petition sought a direction to the authorities to take effective and time bound action to remove all the posts, videos, articles written in the name of Kaushik, which are irrelevant at present and causing serious injury to his dignity and reputation. .
He sought to take advantage of the “right to be forgotten” to protect his life, liberty, dignity and prestige.
The photos, videos and articles pertain to his detention in 2009 for the alleged offense of drunken driving.
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