The Delhi High Court on Thursday issued notice to the Centre on a petition by reality show celebrity Ashutosh Kaushik seeking to remove some of his videos, photos and articles from various online platforms claiming “people should not be indefinitely reminded of their past mistakes”.
Justice Rekha Palli also issued notices to Google, Press Council of India and Electronic Media Monitoring Centre on Mr. Kaushik’s plea in which he invoked the “right to privacy” and the “right to be forgotten”.
Mr. Kaushik, who had won MTV Hero Honda Roadies 5.0 in 2007 and second season of Bigg Boss in 2008, urged the High Court to safeguard his reputation and dignity by removing his videos, photos and articles from online platforms as they have a “detrimental effect” on his life.
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Some of the online articles relate to Mr. Kaushik’s arrest in a drunk driving incident in 2009. The plea has also asked for removal of some articles relating to Mr. Kaushik creating ruckus at a Mumbai cafe in 2013. He has also sought removal of a controversial video on YouTube.
Mr. Kaushik said he has been haunted by his past mistakes as multiple photos, articles, videos continue to be present on the Internet showing a few diminutive acts, which were “erroneously committed” by him.
The plea said right to be forgotten reflects the claim of an individual to have certain data deleted so that third persons can no longer trace them. The right entitles individuals to have information, videos or photographs about themselves deleted from the Internet records so that search engines cannot find them.
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The plea stated that the origin of this right can be traced back to the French jurisprudence on the ‘right to oblivion’ or Droit à l’oubli . The rationale behind it was to allow offenders who had served their sentence to object to the publication of information regarding them.
It pointed out that Justice B.N. Srikrishna Committee, which drafted Personal Data Protection Bill, 2018, introduced a new right called the ‘right to be forgotten’, which referred to the ability of an individual to limit, delink, delete, or correct the disclosure of personal information on the Internet that is misleading, embarrassing, or irrelevant.
The petition said that Mr. Kaushik is “compelled to live under mental depression owing to the articles published under his name which have no relevance in the present times”. Mr. Kaushik sought removal of the articles and contents in a time-bound manner.