Right to Be Forgotten: Privacy vs Open Justice Explained

The "right to be forgotten" is the idea that a person can ask for some personal information about them to be removed or made harder to find online, especially when that information is old, no longer accurate, or no longer serves a public purpose. A court order from the Delhi High Court on May 29, 2026, brought fresh attention to this idea and to the tension it creates with the principle of open justice.

What is the right to be forgotten?

This right grew out of the spread of digital records. Earlier, court judgments and old news lived in paper files and libraries, so they were hard to find. Today, the same records sit online, and search engines and automated archiving tools can surface them instantly to anyone with an internet connection. For a person who was once accused but later cleared, this lasting digital footprint can cause real harm, even years later.

The concept first took clear shape in Europe, where courts and law-makers allowed individuals to ask for the removal of links to outdated personal data. In Europe, this right is not absolute. It is balanced against freedom of expression and the public interest, so it does not apply when keeping the information public is genuinely important.

Link to the right to privacy

In India, the right to be forgotten is closely tied to the right to privacy. In the landmark case Justice K.S. Puttaswamy vs Union of India (2017), a nine-judge bench of the Supreme Court held that the right to privacy is a fundamental right protected under Article 21 (right to life and personal liberty). The judgment recognised "informational privacy", which means a person has some control over how their personal information is collected, used, and shared. The right to be forgotten is treated as one part of this larger right to informational privacy.

The clash with open justice

Open justice is another important constitutional principle. It means court proceedings should be open to public scrutiny so that people can understand the law, watch how justice is administered, and keep a historical record of the courts. This usually points in favour of keeping records public and easy to find.

The two principles can pull in opposite directions. Privacy may favour removing or hiding a person's name from old records, while open justice favours keeping records fully accessible. The Delhi High Court order showed this tension. The judge reasoned that simply updating a record may not be enough, because search engines can show small parts of a judgment without proper context, because open justice does not require finding a case using the accused person's name, and because correcting the official copy does not fix copies that other websites may have already made.

A different view: accuracy, not erasure

There is also a competing view that the real problem is incompleteness rather than easy discoverability. By this reasoning, if a person was acquitted or discharged, anyone searching for the case should also clearly see that final outcome, instead of finding only the original accusation. Court records are official acts of the state, and hiding them can weaken the public record. Supporters of this view argue that the better solution is digital accuracy: keep records fully public but update them prominently to show major decisions, and require platforms and court registries that index legal information to refresh their databases regularly and display results with proper context. A related concern about preserving the integrity of the public record was raised in the Indian Kanoon matter in 2024.

Data protection context

The debate also connects to India's evolving data protection framework. The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 deals with how personal digital data is processed and gives individuals certain rights over their data, such as the right to correction and erasure of personal data in defined situations. How such rights interact with public court records is a developing area, and the courts continue to shape the balance between privacy and open justice.