Delhi High Court Clarifies Procedure for Taking Down Defamation Content Against Smriti Irani
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The Delhi High Court on Thursday clarified for the future procedure to be adopted for taking down defamatory content from social media platforms against Union Minister Smriti Irani and her daughter .
The High court was considering applications submitted by social media intermediaries such as X, to modify its interim order from July 29, 2022, asking social media platforms to remove allegations, videos, posts, ,morphed pictures of Irani and her daughter as well as any “underlined material with such defamatory content or similar content related to that on there respective social media platforms.
A lawsuit filed against Congress leader Jairam Ramesh, Pawan Khera, and Netta D’Souza by Smriti Irani in 2022 for seeking a direction to them to remove social media posts regarding allegations brought in against her daughter. The allegations were against “statutory license in respect of food and beverages operations” at a restaurant ‘Silly Souls Cafe and Bar’ in Goa.
A single-judge bench of justice Prateek Jalan, said “if Irani considers any content on social media which violates the injunction order by the social media intermediaries then her counsel will address a communication to the person which has uploaded the content with a copy to the social media in July 2022 order and on Thursday’s order request them to take down .
“If the request does not compiled within three days after the receipt, Smriti Irani may approach to the social media intermediaries. If the intermediary accepts that the content published violates the July 2022 order it should take it down within three days”. The Court said.
According to the court, the intermediaries have three days to notify Iran if they believe that the July 2022 order does not cover the content in question. “Irani can then proceed with filing an application with the court.
The counsel appearing for the intermediaries stated that the difficulty arise from a possible reading of the interim order which obliges them to delete content from their platforms ,including the removal of anything related that.
“Injuction has already been substantially compiled with and as far as the plaintiff is aware, most of the impugned URLs have already been taken”, a report submitted by the senior counsel appearing for Irani.
