The Right to Be Forgotten in India: Bridging the Gap Between Privacy and the Digital Age

Author

Prachi Rai is a 4th-year BA LLB (Hons) student at Chhatrapati Sahuji Maharaj University, Kanpur.

Introduction

Imagine that, years ago, someone was named in a news report about a case that was later withdrawn, or a court proceeding that ended in their favour. Today, a simple search of their name still brings up that old story, even though it no longer reflects who they are. This is the problem that the “right to be forgotten” tries to solve. It is the idea that a person should, in certain situations, be able to ask that outdated, irrelevant, or harmful personal information about them be removed from public view, especially from the internet.

As India becomes more digital, more of our lives, our mistakes, our court cases, our old social media posts, live online permanently. Yet Indian law does not yet have a clear, complete answer to the question of whether, and how, a person can ask for this information to be taken down.

This blog looks at how this issue has developed in India, what the law currently says, why it matters so much today, and where the gaps still lie.

Background and Development of the Issue

The idea of a right to be forgotten first became well known through a 2014 decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union, which allowed individuals to ask search engines to remove links to personal information that was outdated or irrelevant.¹ The European Union later wrote this right directly into its General Data Protection Regulation.²

In India, the idea entered legal conversation mainly through the right to privacy. In 2017, in Justice K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India, the Supreme Court held that privacy is a fundamental right protected under Article 21 of the Constitution.³ The judgment specifically noted that the right to privacy includes the ability to control the dissemination of personal information, opening the door for courts to later apply a right-to-be-forgotten style protection even without a specific law on the subject.

Since then, several High Courts have dealt with individual requests to remove personal information, such as old court orders or news reports, from public platforms, but they have done so on a case-by-case basis rather than under one uniform rule.⁴

The Existing Legal Position

India does not yet have a single, dedicated law that creates a general right to be forgotten. Instead, protection comes from a mix of sources:

• Article 21 of the Constitution, as interpreted in Puttaswamy, which protects informational privacy as part of the right to life and personal liberty.⁵
• The Information Technology Act, 2000, particularly Section 43A and the associated data protection rules, which impose some obligations on companies handling personal data.⁶
• The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, India’s first comprehensive data protection law, which gives individuals a right to correction and erasure of their personal data, though it is narrower than a full right to be forgotten and does not directly cover court records or media reports.⁷
• Scattered High Court rulings, where courts such as the Delhi, Karnataka, Kerala, Gujarat, and Orissa High Courts have ordered removal of names or case details from search results and public records in specific circumstances, usually involving acquittals, matrimonial disputes, or sexual offence cases.⁸

Because there is no single statute governing this right, the outcome for a person seeking removal of their information often depends on which court they approach and how that court interprets privacy principles, rather than on a fixed, predictable legal standard.

Significance of the Issue in the Contemporary Context

This issue is becoming more urgent for a simple reason: information today does not fade the way it used to. A newspaper clipping from twenty years ago would have been forgotten in a physical archive; today, the same story is permanently searchable.

This affects a person’s ability to get a job, form relationships, or simply move on from a difficult period of life, even after courts have cleared their name or circumstances have changed.

At the same time, India is going through rapid digitisation of courts, government records, and media, which means more personal data is being placed online than ever before.

Getting the balance right, between a person’s dignity and privacy on one hand, and the public’s right to information and freedom of the press on the other, is one of the defining legal questions of this decade.

The Research Gap and Unresolved Aspects

Several aspects of this issue remain unsettled in Indian law:

• There is no statutory definition of what counts as information that can be “forgotten,” leaving courts to develop standards on an ad hoc basis.
• The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 covers correction and erasure of personal data held by companies (“data fiduciaries”), but it is unclear how, or whether, it applies to publicly available court judgments, news archives, or government gazettes.⁹
• There is no clear procedure for weighing a person’s privacy interest against the public interest in keeping information, such as a judicial record, accessible and transparent.
• It remains uncertain whether search engines, most of which are based outside India, can be effectively compelled to remove or delist content for Indian users.

These gaps mean that, for now, the right to be forgotten in India exists more as a judicial principle applied case by case than as a clear, enforceable right that any citizen can rely on with certainty.

Critical Analysis

The current, fragmented approach has real strengths and real weaknesses.

On the positive side, allowing courts to decide requests case by case gives judges the flexibility to weigh the specific facts of each situation, rather than applying a rigid, one-size-fits-all rule. This is valuable in a country as diverse as India, where the harm caused by old information can vary enormously between cases.

On the other hand, this same flexibility creates unpredictability. Two people in similar situations may get very different outcomes depending on which High Court hears their case and how that particular bench views the balance between privacy and open justice. This is a serious shortcoming, because citizens cannot know in advance whether they have a real chance of success.

There is also a deeper tension that Indian law has not fully resolved: the principle of open justice, which holds that court proceedings and judgments should generally be public,¹⁰ can conflict directly with an individual’s interest in not being defined forever by a single case.

Courts have so far leaned towards protecting privacy mainly in sensitive categories, such as sexual offences, matrimonial matters, and cases ending in acquittal, but have been far more cautious about extending this protection to ordinary civil or criminal proceedings.

Another practical challenge is enforcement. Even where an Indian court orders that certain content be delisted or removed, doing so against global platforms and search engines, many of which store data outside India, raises difficult jurisdictional questions. A right that cannot be practically enforced offers limited real protection.

A reasonable path forward would be for Parliament, or the rules made under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, to lay down clear, narrow criteria for when erasure can be sought, for example, cases involving acquittal, expunged records, or information that is demonstrably outdated and no longer relevant, while expressly preserving public access to information that serves a genuine public interest, such as records involving public officials or matters of ongoing public concern.

Clear timelines, a defined complaint mechanism, and guidance for search engines operating in India would also reduce the current unpredictability.

Relevant Legal Provisions and Authorities

• Article 21, Constitution of India – right to life and personal liberty, interpreted to include the right to privacy.
• Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) v. Union of India, (2017) 10 SCC 1 – Supreme Court decision recognising privacy as a fundamental right.
• Information Technology Act, 2000, Section 43A and the Information Technology (Reasonable Security Practices and Procedures and Sensitive Personal Data or Information) Rules, 2011.
• Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 – provisions on correction and erasure of personal data.
• Various High Court rulings on removal of names or case records from public platforms, including decisions of the Delhi, Karnataka, Kerala, Gujarat, and Orissa High Courts.

Conclusion

India’s engagement with the right to be forgotten shows a legal system responding, case by case, to a genuinely new kind of harm created by the permanence of digital information.

The recognition of informational privacy as part of Article 21 was an important first step, and the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 has begun to build a statutory foundation. However, the absence of a clear, uniform standard means the right remains inconsistent and, in practice, hard to rely on.

Going forward, the most useful reform would be a clear statutory framework that defines when personal information can be erased, sets out a fair process for making such requests, and honestly confronts the tension between an individual’s dignity and the public’s right to information.

Until that happens, the right to be forgotten in India will remain a promising idea rather than a dependable legal guarantee, and its future development is likely to remain one of the more significant legal issues to watch as the country continues its shift into the digital age.

References

1. Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) v. Union of India, (2017) 10 SCC 1.
2. Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (India).
3. Information Technology Act, 2000 (India), s 43A.
4. Google Spain SL v. Agencia Española de Protección de Datos, Case C-131/12 (CJEU, 2014).