Is the right to be forgotten necessary for privacy?

A petitioner has sought the relief saying it would affect his employment opportunities as companies often search about prospective employees on the internet and as the criminal case pops up on searching his name, it might give an impression that he was involved in it.

A petitioner has sought the relief saying it would affect his employment opportunities as companies often search about prospective employees on the internet and as the criminal case pops up on searching his name, it might give an impression that he was involved in it. (Wikimedia)

Does right to privacy include right to delink from the Internet the irrelevant information, the Delhi High Court has asked the Centre and Google.

Justice Manmohan sought the responses of the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, Google and IKanoon on a plea of an NRI seeking that he be "delinked" from information regarding a criminal case involving his wife in which he was not a party.

The petitioner has sought the relief saying it would affect his employment opportunities as companies often search about prospective employees on the internet and as the criminal case pops up on searching his name, it might give an impression that he was involved in it.

His petition has raised the question "whether data controllers or intermediaries such as Google, are required to delete information that is inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant if they receive a request for removal of such data".

The petitioner, in his plea filed through advocates Rohit Madan and Akash Vajpai, has said the criminal case involving his wife and his mother against each other pops up when his name is searched on the Internet.

"Petitioner got to know that anyone who searches his name on Google will find the aforesaid judgment (of the criminal case) on the second number of search result and consequently giving the impression to everyone that was involved in some sort of criminal proceeding in India," the plea said.

The plea has also said, "petitioner tried to contact Respondent 4 (IKanoon) and made a request for taking down the aforesaid judgment through letter dated January 25, 2016 as petitioner wanted this order to be expunged, from website of Respondent 4."

It also said that the petitioner had contacted Respondent 2 and 3 (Google Inc and Google India) and sent an email for removing the concerned Uniform Resource Locator from the search result.