--- title: "Right to Be Forgotten in India: Delhi High Court’s Ruling in Laksh Vir Singh Yadav and Its Interplay with the DPDP Act" date: 2026-11-02 author: "Dhruv Kaushal" url: https://ksandk.com/data-protection-and-data-privacy/right-to-be-forgotten-india-dpdp-act-judicial-records/ --- On 29 May 2026, the Delhi High Court delivered its judgment in *Laksh Vir Singh Yadav v. Union of India & Connected Matters* (Neutral Citation: 2026:DHC:4891). Justice Sachin Datta disposed of a batch of more than thirty writ petitions. The petitioners were individuals whose names continued to appear in online name-based searches linked to judicial records primarily involving acquittals, discharges, quashed proceedings, settled matrimonial disputes, and certain private civil matters long after the proceedings had ended. The Court held that the right to be forgotten forms part of the fundamental right to informational privacy under Article 21 of the Constitution. It described this right as the ability of an individual to seek removal or restriction of personal information from public digital accessibility where the information is no longer relevant or serves no legitimate public purpose. The ruling built on the recognition of privacy in *Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) v. Union of India* (2017) while carefully balancing it against the principle of open justice. ## **Forms of Relief: De-indexing and Masking** The Court did not order the deletion or erasure of judicial records themselves. Instead, it recognised two forms of relief: - **De-indexing**: Search engines (including Google LLC, Google Inc. and Google India) were directed to remove the relevant judgments, orders and associated reportage from results that appear when a person’s name is searched. The records remain accessible through case numbers, citations, court names or dates. **Masking**: In appropriate cases, personal identifiers (including names) in publicly accessible digital versions of judgments could be replaced with placeholders. Applications for masking should ordinarily be made before the court that passed the original judgment or order, while preserving the unredacted judicial record. The original unredacted version continues to form part of the court record. - **Delinking**: Hyperlinks to third-party media content tied to the same identifiers could be severed where justified. The Court emphasised that these steps do not amount to censorship or suppression of judicial records. The reasoning, findings, legal conclusions and formal details of the judgment remain intact and publicly available. The Court emphasised that relief must be assessed on a case-by-case basis, having regard to factors such as the outcome of the proceedings, the nature and sensitivity of the information, the time elapsed, the individual’s public role, the accuracy of the material and the existence of any continuing public interest. Relief is subject to limitations, particularly in cases involving serious criminal convictions, offences against women or children, breach of public trust and matters concerning the public conduct of public figures. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) was directed to ensure compliance by intermediaries and search engine operators and to file a compliance affidavit. ## **Section 12 of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023: The Statutory Right to Erasure** Section 12 of the[Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023](https://prsindia.org/billtrack/digital-personal-data-protection-bill-2023) (DPDP Act) provides for the right to correction, completion, updating and erasure of personal data. However, pursuant to the Central Government’s commencement notification dated 13 November 2025, Section 12 is scheduled to come into force on 13 May 2027. This statutory right is narrower than a full “right to be forgotten.” It is purpose-limited and subject to other legal retention obligations. It primarily governs processing by entities that determine the purpose and means of processing digital personal data. Official judicial records occupy a different position. Courts perform public functions, maintain authentic records of proceedings, and operate under constitutional and statutory duties of transparency. Section 17 of the DPDP Act provides specific exemptions from certain provisions, including Chapter III, where processing is necessary for enforcing a legal right or claim, or where processing by a court or tribunal is necessary for the performance of its judicial functions. As a result, Section 12 does not create an automatic right to demand deletion of a court judgment from official repositories or platforms that host authentic judicial material. [DPDP Act compliance services](https://ksandk.com/data-privacy-lawyers-in-bengaluru/) can help organisations assess their data retention and disclosure practices against applicable legal obligations. An individual seeking de-indexing of judicial records may seek appropriate constitutional relief before the competent High Court. Where masking of personal identifiers is sought, the individual should ordinarily approach the court that passed the original judgment or order. Requests directed solely to private platforms under Section 12 are unlikely to achieve the removal of authentic court records, though platforms may still be required to implement court-ordered de-indexing or masking. ## **The Boundary Between Privacy and Open Justice** The *Laksh Vir Singh Yadav* judgment draws a clear line. Complete erasure of judicial records would undermine open justice, the historical record of the courts, and the ability of the public, future litigants and researchers to understand legal developments. De-indexing and masking address the specific harm caused by perpetual name-based discoverability in the digital environment while leaving the substance of the judicial record intact. This approach is consistent with the proportionality analysis that has guided Indian privacy jurisprudence since *Puttaswamy*. Privacy is a fundamental right, but it is not absolute. It must be balanced against competing constitutional values, including freedom of speech and expression under Article 19(1)(a) and the public interest in open justice. ## **Practical Implications for Individuals and Organisations** For individuals, the judgment provides a clearer constitutional pathway when old judicial records continue to dominate online search results after the underlying dispute has concluded. Success depends on showing that continued name-based accessibility causes disproportionate harm and that the public interest in unrestricted name-based retrieval has substantially diminished. For organisations that index, publish or process legal information legal databases, news archives, search engines and [compliance platforms](https://ksandk.com/data-protection-and-data-privacy/generative-ai-use-policy-employees-india/) the ruling clarifies that name-based search functionality and public display of identifiers may need to be adjusted when a competent court so directs. Records must still remain accessible through neutral identifiers. [Businesses processing personal data in India](https://ksandk.com/data-protection-and-data-privacy/data-processing-agreement-under-dpdp-act/) should begin preparing for the phased implementation of the DPDP Act. The substantive obligations relating to personal data processing, including purpose limitation, storage limitation and the rights of Data Principals, are scheduled to come into force on 13 May 2027. When personal data intersects with publicly available judicial material, additional care is required. Entities conducting [DPDP compliance audit services](https://ksandk.com/data-protection-and-data-privacy/privacy-due-diligence-ma-india-dpdp-act/) may need to map data flows that include references to court records and assess whether retention or display practices remain consistent with both statutory obligations and judicial standards on informational privacy. The central legal position is that Section 12 does not confer an unrestricted right to erase information forming part of the official judicial record. The constitutional framework recognised in May 2026 enables targeted restrictions on accessibility without dismantling the public character of court documents. ## **Continuing Development** The judgment provides an important framework for balancing informational privacy with the principle of open justice. Its application will depend on the facts and circumstances of individual cases. Questions remain about the precise obligations of legal databases, the criteria for determining diminished public interest, and the interaction between constitutional remedies and the [operational provisions of the DPDP Act](https://ksandk.com/data-protection-and-data-privacy/dpdp-act-separate-privacy-notices/) as they come fully into force. For the present, the judgment confirms that the right to be forgotten in the context of judicial records is constitutionally grounded yet carefully bounded. It protects dignity and informational self-determination while preserving the integrity of the judicial archive. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### 1. Does the Laksh Vir Singh Yadav judgment allow complete deletion of court judgments from the public domain? No. The Court rejected erasure of the judicial record. The available remedies are de-indexing from name-based search results and, in suitable cases, masking of personal identifiers in publicly accessible digital versions. The substance of the judgment and access through case numbers or citations remain intact. ### 2. Can Section 12 of the DPDP Act be used to demand removal of a person’s name from an authentic court judgment published online? Section 12 of the DPDP Act provides for a right to request erasure of personal data, subject to the prescribed procedure and exceptions relating to continued retention for the specified purpose or compliance with applicable law. However, Section 12 is scheduled to come into force on 13 May 2027. It does not automatically require courts or legal databases to delete authentic judicial records. ### 3. In which categories of cases is de-indexing or masking more likely to be granted? The Court indicated greater willingness to grant relief in cases of acquittal, discharge, quashed proceedings, settled matrimonial or private civil disputes, and other matters where the public interest in continued name-based accessibility has substantially diminished. Relief is less readily available for serious criminal convictions or information that retains clear ongoing public interest. ### 4. What obligations does the judgment place on search engines and legal databases? Where the Court grants relief, search engines are directed to de-index the relevant content from name-based results. Legal databases may be required to disable name-based search for the specific parties while keeping the records accessible by case number, citation or other neutral identifiers. Compliance is enforced through court directions. ### Explore KSK Data Privacy Hub Free compliance tools and expert guidance covering 75+ jurisdictions. 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