The Delhi High Court on Thursday ordered social media intermediaries, including X Corp (formerly Twitter) and Google, to immediately remove video recordings of former Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal arguing his plea for disqualification of Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma in a tax policy case.
The direction was issued by a bench of Justices Kameshwar Rao and Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora while hearing the petition filed by advocate Vaibhav Singh.
The petition also sought initiation of contempt proceedings against Kejriwal and others for allegedly flouting rules for online hearings under the Electronic Evidence Conferencing and Video Recording Rules 2025, which prohibit recording and publication of court proceedings, alleging that “selective portions” of recordings were uploaded to serve a political agenda.
The Supreme Court also observed that intermediaries, under the IT Rules, are required to make reasonable efforts to ensure that users do not host, upload, publish, transmit or share content that violates the law.
Noting that “The Information Technology Rules 2021 specifically Rule 3(1)(b) provides as follows. A perusal shall reveal that the intermediary is bound to make reasonable efforts itself or cause users of its computer resources not to host, display, upload, publish, transmit, store or share any information in violation of the law,” it also directed both Google (which owns YouTube) and X Corp to remove its videos or links.
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It also noted that no one appeared on behalf of
However, lawyer Vaibhav Singh pointed out that some content is still available on YouTube.
Lawyers for Meta Platforms and Google also stated that it is not technically possible to identify all infringing posts on social media platforms, and that they do not have the technology to track the original uploaders of such content.
The court also issued a notice in the petition, asking Kejriwal, along with Congress leader Digvijay Singh, journalist Raveesh Kumar, and Aam Aadmi Party leaders Manish Sisodia, Sanjay Singh, Sanjeev Jha, Jarnail Singh, Mukesh Ahlawat and Vinay Mishra, to respond.
The case is scheduled to be heard on July 6.
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On February 27, the court released Kejriwal, Sisodia and 21 others, holding that the CBI materials did not even reveal a prima facie case. The agency has appealed this to the Supreme Court, calling the findings “inherently wrong” and claiming it ignored key evidence.
Subsequently, on March 9, a bench of Justice Sharma stayed the trial court’s directions to take action against the CBI officer, terming the statements “prima facie fundamentally wrong”, and adjourned the ED proceedings.
Kejriwal then sought transfer of the appeal from the bench of Justice Sharma, which was dismissed on March 13.
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He then filed an application for Justice Sharma’s disqualification, and appeared before the court on April 6 and April 13, arguing his application for more than an hour – videos of which went viral on various social media platforms.
On Monday, Justice Sharma rejected the disqualification requests.
