PIL against Kejriwal: Court directs removal of clips

The Delhi High Court on Thursday sought the stand of AAP leaders Arvind Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia and Sanjay Singh, Congress leader Digvijay Singh and others on a PIL seeking contempt action against them for allegedly uploading and sharing clips of court hearing on the former chief minister’s plea seeking recusal of Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma in the liquor policy case.

A bench of justices V Kameswar Rao and Manmeet PS Arora issued notice to them on the petition by advocate Vaibhav Singh and directed social media platforms to take down the videos of the April 13 hearing, as unauthorised recording and sharing of court proceedings are prohibited under the High Court rules.

Counsel for Meta Platforms and Google said the offending links flagged by the petitioner in his plea have been taken down.

Noting that certain videos allegedly showing the April 13 proceedings were available on X, it directed, “If that be so, respondent no 4 (X) shall take down those links” immediately upon receipt of notice.

The court granted the petitioner liberty to approach the counsel for the social media platforms if he finds any other video clips of the proceedings, which would then be removed by them.

“We issue notice to respondent no. 4 and other respondents. The affidavit shall be filed in four weeks,” the court said. The other respondents include AAP leaders Sanjeev Jha, Mukesh Ahlawat, Jarnail Singh and journalist Ravish Kumar.

Listing the matter for hearing on July 6, the court also issued notice to the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and sought its appearance in the matter.

During the hearing, the bench said that unauthorised recording, uploading and publishing of court hearings is prohibited under the High Court rules and asked the social media platforms if they could ensure the removal of such content after it was uploaded.

“We are concerned with the larger interest of the institution. Otherwise, if we don’t control this, it would go (on),” the court remarked.

Counsel appearing for Meta Platforms stated that as an intermediary, it neither functions as a “super censor” nor does it have the technology to proactively monitor appearance of specific content but acts when an issue is escalated as per the law.

“The moment we get to know, we take it down.

The moment we got the letter (in this case from the High Court administration), we took it down,” the senior counsel for Meta said, adding that no case for initiating contempt action against the platform was established.

The court also asked the platforms to state if it could identity who was the first person to upload the videos in question. 

The counsel for Meta said since the uploader accounts have been identified, they can supply the subscriber information.

The petitioner’s counsel submitted that the unauthorised recording and sharing of court recordings on social media undermined the independence of the judiciary and was illegal.

Seeking initiation of contempt action against the respondents, he said the videos were edited to “serve the political agenda” of the respondents.

The petition claimed that several AAP leaders and members of various other opposition parties, including Congress leader Digvijay Singh, however, “intentionally and deliberately recorded and circulated” videos of Kejriwal’s appearance before Justice Sharma on April 13 on social media with the intention to malign the image of the court in the eyes of the public.

Alleging that Kejriwal and his party members hatched a “conspiracy” and “dirty strategy” to record the court proceedings, the PIL urged that an SIT be formed to investigate the matter and contempt proceedings be initiated against “all respondents who uploaded, reposted, forwarded the recording of court proceedings dated April 13, 2026”.

The PIL also prayed for the removal of the content from social media.

On April 15, Singh filed a complaint with the High Court registrar general against the alleged unauthorised recording of court proceedings.

On April 20, Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma refused to recuse herself from hearing the liquor-policy case, saying a litigant cannot be allowed to judge a judge without any material, and judges cannot recuse themselves to satisfy a litigant’s unfounded apprehension of bias.