Delhi High Court Clarifies De-indexing Directive Excludes Meta

The Delhi High Court has ruled that its earlier directions mandating search engines and legal databases to de-index judicial records from name-based searches do not extend to Meta's platforms, such as Facebook. This clarification was issued in the context of a 'right to be forgotten' case.

The ruling addresses a previous order from a single-judge bench that compelled search engine operators, including Google, to remove certain judicial records from search results based on names. The legal database Indian Kanoon was also directed to restrict name-based searches for these records.

Meta had approached the court seeking clarification, arguing that Facebook is not a search engine and thus cannot comply with directives specifically targeted at search engines. The company stated it had already removed the URLs in question.

The Division Bench agreed that the initial directives were specific to search engines and de-indexing. Consequently, Meta's petition was closed with the clarification that the previous de-indexing orders do not apply to Facebook or Meta platforms.