Goa bar row: HC clarifies procedure for future take down of defamatory content against Smriti Irani

New Delhi, Feb 29 (PTI) The Delhi High Court on Thursday clarified the procedure to be adopted for taking down alleged defamatory content from social media against Union minister and BJP leader Smriti Irani and her daughter.

The high court passed the order in a civil defamation suit by Irani, the Minister for Women and Child Development, seeking damages of over Rs 2 crore from Congress leaders Jairam Ramesh, Pawan Khera and Netta D’Souza for allegedly making baseless and false accusations against her and her 18-year-old daughter.

The court was hearing three applications filed by X, Facebook and YouTube seeking modification of its July 29, 2022 order asking social media platforms to remove allegations, videos, posts, tweets, re-tweets, captions, taglines along with the morphed pictures of Irani and her daughter.

On July 29, 2022, the high court had issued summonses to the three Congress leaders on the civil defamation suit filed by Irani and asked them to take down tweets and other social media posts levelling some allegations against the union minister and her daughter.

On Thursday, Justice Prateek Jalan elaborated on the procedure of taking down the alleged defamatory content for future and said if Irani considers any content on social media platforms X, Facebook and YouTube to be violative of the July 29, 2022 injunction order, her counsel will address a communication to the person or entity that uploaded the content with a copy of the court orders and request them to take down the material.

It said if the request is not acceded to within three days, the plaintiff may approach these intermediaries for removal of the content.

In case, the intermediaries are of the view that the particular content is not covered by the injunction order, they will inform the plaintiff within three days, and in such an event, Irani would be free to file an application before the court, it said.

The counsel appearing for the intermediaries submitted that the difficulty arises from a possible reading of the earlier order which obliges them to remove the content from their platforms, including removal of “anything similar thereto”.

The counsel said the direction, to which they were seeking modification, would result in active monitoring of the content by them.

Irani’s counsel submitted the injunction has been substantially complied with and that most of the impugned URLs have already been taken down.

Irani had filed the suit after the Congress leaders alleged that her daughter Zoish Irani ran an illegal bar in Goa and also targeted the minister over this, demanding that Prime Minister Narendra Modi sack her from his Cabinet.

The minister had claimed the “malicious” charge was made at the behest of the Gandhi family due to her vocal stand in the National Herald-linked money laundering case, and vowed to fight back.

The plea said the suit was filed seeking “mandatory and permanent injunction against the defendants, to take down/ delete various false and defamatory allegations and similar posts/ tweets, morphed/ extrapolated pictures and publications of similar nature against the applicant and from publishing and disseminating any further defamatory posts/ tweets, pictures and publications and leveling false allegations “

It said the continuous telecast/viewership of said allegations on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram has caused grave prejudice to the applicant and it is nothing less than a deliberate smear campaign based on personal and political vendetta.

She had approached the court after the Congress leaders did not respond to the legal notice sent by her.