Is there a right to be forgotten in India? Not as a statutory right, not yet. No Indian Act gives you the delisting right that Article 17 of the GDPR gives a person in the European Union. What India has instead is a line of High Court decisions that enforce a right to be forgotten case by case under the right to privacy in Article 21 of the Constitution, a Supreme Court that has stayed several of those orders and is now deciding where the limits lie, and a practical takedown route under the Information Technology Act, 2000 and the IT Rules, 2021 that works on fixed timelines without a court at all. This guide explains all three and sets out the numbered grievance route we use. It supports our negative news removal and personal reputation management services.
Is there a right to be forgotten in Indian law?
No statute creates one today. The Information Technology Act, 2000 says nothing about erasure or delisting. The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 does include a right to correction and erasure of personal data in Section 12, but that section is not yet in force: the commencement notification of 13 November 2025 brings it into effect eighteen months later, in May 2027. Even then it is an erasure right against the organisation that collected your data with your consent, not a delisting mechanism against a search engine or a newspaper, and how it will apply to journalism and court records is untested. In May 2026 the Delhi High Court said plainly that India presently lacks a comprehensive statutory framework governing the right to be forgotten, and then enforced the right anyway on constitutional grounds. That sentence is the honest answer to the question.
What have the High Courts decided about the right to be forgotten in India?
The foundation is the Supreme Court’s 2017 privacy judgment in Puttaswamy, which recognised privacy as a fundamental right under Article 21 and, in Justice Kaul’s opinion, discussed a limited right to be forgotten that must give way to the public interest in free expression, public records and journalism. Since then the High Courts have built on that opinion in different directions:
- Karnataka High Court (2017) ordered a woman’s name masked in a judgment available online, the first Indian order that commentators treat as recognising the right.
- Gujarat High Court (2017) refused to remove a published acquittal judgment from the internet, finding no legal basis for the request.
- Orissa High Court (2020) said the right should be available to victims of intimate images posted without consent.
- Delhi High Court (2021), in Jorawer Singh Mundy, directed Google to remove a judgment that recorded an acquittal from search results for the petitioner’s name, as an interim measure, weighing his privacy against public access to court records.
- Kerala High Court (2022), in Vysakh K.G., held that the right is not absolute, that the legislature rather than the courts should set its grounds, that it cannot be claimed in criminal matters or ongoing cases, and that parties in matrimonial cases may ask for their personal details to be withheld from published judgments.
- Delhi High Court (May 2026), in a batch of petitions, grounded the right in Article 21, directed Google and other search operators to de-index judgments, news articles and videos from name-based searches where relief was granted, directed a legal database to restrict name-based search of the affected records, and ordered personal identifiers masked in the public version of some judgments.
The pattern matters more than any one case. Courts grant relief most readily where a person was acquitted or discharged, where the matter was private or matrimonial, where the content is intimate imagery, and where the ask is to mask a name or to stop a name-based search rather than to delete a record. They refuse it where a criminal case is still open, where the person is a public figure, or where the content is accurate reporting of a matter of public interest.
Where does the Supreme Court stand?
Undecided, and actively cautious. In July 2024 the Supreme Court stayed a Madras High Court order that had directed a legal database to remove references to a petitioner’s identity from a 2011 judgment; that appeal is pending. On 6 February 2026 it stayed a Delhi district court order and the Delhi High Court order that upheld it, which had directed a national newspaper and a legal database to remove news reports and court records about a man who was later discharged in a criminal case. The Internet Freedom Foundation’s note on that stay lists the batch of right to be forgotten matters now before the Supreme Court. Until it rules, a High Court order in your favour is possible but can be stayed on appeal, and an order to delete journalism or a court record outright is the least likely to survive. A note on the May 2026 Delhi High Court judgment shows what the courts are currently prepared to order instead: de-indexing from name searches and masking of identifiers.
What is the IT Rules 2021 grievance officer route?
The route that works without a court. The Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, made under the IT Act, require every intermediary operating in India, which covers social networks, review sites, forums, video platforms, search engines and hosting providers, to publish the name and contact details of a grievance officer and to run complaints on fixed timelines under Rule 3(2). Those timelines were tightened by the amendment notified on 10 February 2026 and in force from 20 February 2026. As the rule now reads, the grievance officer must acknowledge your complaint within 24 hours and resolve it within seven days of receipt, down from fifteen. A complaint asking for the removal of content that falls within the categories listed in Rule 3(1)(b), with a few exceptions such as intellectual property claims, must be acted on as expeditiously as possible and resolved within 36 hours, down from 72. A complaint about content that shows a person’s private areas, nudity or a sexual act, or that impersonates them electronically, including morphed images, must be removed within two hours under Rule 3(2)(b), down from 24 hours. Separately, an intermediary that receives a court order or a reasoned government notification about unlawful content must take it down within three hours under Rule 3(1)(d), down from 36.
Two limits are worth knowing before you file. First, the words “defamatory” and “libellous” were deleted from the Rule 3(1)(b) list in October 2022, precisely so that platforms would not have to judge defamation; a complaint that is purely “this is false and damaging” therefore belongs in the seven-day general track or in court, while content that invades your privacy, impersonates you, or is patently false and misleading still fits the 36-hour track. Second, the rules bind intermediaries hosting other people’s content. A newspaper publishing its own journalism is not acting as an intermediary for that article, so the grievance officer route reaches the comment under the story and the copies on social platforms, not the story itself. For the article you need the publisher routes in our guide to removing a news article from Google search.
IT Rules 2021 takedown: how to get content removed in India, step by step
- Step 1: Identify the host and its grievance officer. Every intermediary must publish the officer’s name and contact details on its site or app; look for “grievance officer” in the footer, help centre or legal pages. Note the exact URL of each item of content.
- Step 2: Frame the complaint under a Rule 3(1)(b) category. State which category the content falls under: invasion of privacy including bodily privacy, impersonation, patently false and misleading information, harassment on the basis of gender, content harmful to a child, or a violation of a law in force. That framing is what moves the complaint onto the 36-hour track.
- Step 3: Attach evidence and ask for a specific remedy. Screenshots with dates, the URLs, proof of your identity where the content is about you, and any document that shows the content is false or private. Ask for removal or disabling of access, and name the smallest acceptable alternative, such as anonymisation.
- Step 4: Hold the platform to the clock. Acknowledgement within 24 hours, resolution within 36 hours for the listed categories, seven days for anything else, two hours for intimate or impersonating content. Keep the acknowledgement; its date starts every later deadline.
- Step 5: Appeal to the Grievance Appellate Committee. If the officer rejects the complaint or the deadline passes, Rule 3A lets you appeal to a government-constituted Grievance Appellate Committee within 30 days of the decision, online, and the committee is required to endeavour to resolve the appeal within 30 days. Its decision binds the platform.
- Step 6: Send the publisher notice in parallel. For an article, blog post or complaint portal that wrote the content itself, a written notice to the editor asking for a correction, update, anonymisation or de-indexing, as described in our guide to removing defamatory content from Google search in India.
- Step 7: Escalate to court only for clearly false content. A civil suit for an injunction, or a right to be forgotten petition in the High Court for an acquittal, a discharged case or a matrimonial record, produces an order that intermediaries must act on within three hours. Treat it as the last step, not the first, because it is slow, public and open to appeal.
- Step 8: Start suppression on day one. Every route above takes time and the search results are being read today. Accurate content that no route will remove is pushed down by negative search result suppression, which also changes what AI assistants repeat about you.
How long does the right to be forgotten take in India?
The grievance route is measured in hours and days: 24 hours to an acknowledgement, 36 hours or seven days to a decision, and a further 30 days if an appeal is needed. A publisher notice runs in weeks. A High Court petition runs in months and can be stayed by the Supreme Court. Suppression shows movement in 30 to 90 days in our experience. Our post on how long online reputation management takes sets the full timeline by route, and running the routes in parallel is what shortens it.
What should you do first?
Decide honestly which category your content falls into. Intimate images, impersonation and private information go to the grievance officer today. An acquittal, a discharged case or a resolved private matter reported years ago is a candidate for anonymisation by the publisher and, if that fails, a High Court petition. Accurate reporting of a public matter about a public figure is a suppression case, and anyone who promises a takedown for it is selling something. Nothing on this page is legal advice; we work the legal steps with our legal partners when a case calls for them.
If content about you is ranking on Google in India, call +91 8700 450 757info@onlinereputationmanage.comemail info@onlinereputationmanage.com or contact the team. A specialist assesses the links privately, tells you which route applies and what it is likely to achieve, and you approve the quote before any work starts.