Thin line between defamation, political criticism: Delhi HC on Raghav Chadha's plea against social media posts

Senior advocate Rajiv Nayar argued there were posts with profane content, including where the politician is shown as having 'sold himself away for money'.

On Thursday, the Delhi High Court stated there was a thin line between political criticism and defamation, as it asked MP Raghav Chadha if he can be "sensitive" to social media posts seemingly criticizing his "political decision".

Chadha recently departed the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) to join the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) and filed a lawsuit in the high court against the publication of alleged malicious and fabricated social media posts that, he claimed, are gravely prejudicial to his reputation and personality rights.

Senior advocate Rajiv Nayar, who appeared for Chadha, argued there were posts with profane content, including where the politician is shown as having "sold himself away for money".

Justice Subramonium Prasad acknowledged that while an individual has the right to live with dignity, the right to free speech under the Constitution also cannot be taken away, reserving verdict on the aspect of interim relief to remove such alleged offending content.

"It is a comment by an individual criticizing a political decision... As a political leader, can you be sensitive," asked Justice Prasad during the hearing.

"Right from Independence, we have grown up seeing R K Laxman's cartoons... In various ways criticism has been made on decisions taken politically, economically... Now social media has gone to greater extent. But still at the end of the day, it's still within the realm of a comment by a person," the judge said.

Chadha's senior counsel affirmed that social media posts implying he "traded for money" cannot be termed as "fair criticism".

Even as Chadha's senior counsel argued that the offending posts "can't stay even for a day", Justice Prasad responded that prima facie they only appeared to be criticism of a decision taken politically.

"According to me, prima facie, these are all only criticism of a political decision," the judge orally stated.

"The line between defamation and criticism is quite thin, right? It's very easy to slip to the other side, which affects your right to live with dignity and you cannot infringe on this side at the same time. Your Article 19 (1) (a) right also cannot be taken away," the court added.

Considering that the alleged offending posts were by unknown individuals, the judge suggested appointing an amicus curiae to assist the court in the matter.

The judge also stated that there was a difference between commercializing personality rights and political criticism.

Chadha's senior lawyer said he was pressing his claim on the basis of defamation at this stage, not violation of personality rights.

Chadha, also represented by advocates Satatya Anand and Nikhil Aradhe, in his plea sought immediate removal and takedown of false, AI-generated and deepfake content circulating widely across social media platforms.

The lawsuit contended that artificial intelligence and deepfake technology were being used in an unauthorized manner to create and disseminate manipulated content, which was a serious infringement of Chadha's legal and constitutional rights.

Several public figures, like actors Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan and Salman Khan, Art of Living founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, journalist Sudhir Chaudhary, podcaster Raj Shamani and Andhra Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Pawan Kalyan, have previously approached the high court seeking protection of their personality and publicity rights. The high court granted them interim relief.

Recently, the high court also protected the personality rights of cricketer Gautam Gambhir and actors Sonakshi Sinha, Vivek Oberoi and Allu Arjun and Congress MP Shashi Tharoor by granting interim relief.

(with PTI inputs)