New Delhi: A public figure can’t be “thin skinned” and must take criticism with humility, Delhi High Court stressed Wednesday as it refused to pass a blanket order on a lawsuit by BJP MP Raghav Chadha seeking removal of alleged malicious and fabricated social media posts.“Majority of the allegedly defamatory content appears to be satirical expressions of the plaintiff’s decisions in the political sphere, and such decisions are likely attract both bouquets and brickbats at the same time…. A public figure should not be so thin-skinned so as to complain about any criticism of his decisions and such criticism ought to be viewed with humility,” Justice Subramonium Prasad said in the interim order, declining to pass a takedown order for a “majority” of the content flagged by Chadha, who left AAP to join BJP in April.However, it found five posts flagged by Chadha containing explicit, profane and vulgar content, which fell outside the purview of “harmless satirical humour”, and directed the social media platforms to take down their links within two weeks till further orders. Justice Prasad also asked the platforms to provide Chadha the ‘basic subscriber information’ and IP logs of the accounts associated with the offensive content.The court asserted that criticism in the form of satirical humour didn’t automatically make it offensive or defamatory, noting that “humour about change in political party alliances, governance, policies, etc. is part and parcel of politics”.Any action by a politician belonging to any party will, in most, if not all circumstances, “invite criticism from, upset, or create turmoil among the general public or members from rival political parties, which may at times be expressed in the form of satirical humour. However, that does not automatically make such content offensive or defamatory”, it observed, underlining that “public figures assuming such positions of power must accept being at the receiving end of the satirical humour as a necessary and inevitable aspect of their profession, though unpleasant”.Chadha has claimed that alleged posts were gravely prejudicial to his reputation and personality rights.Noting that a “fair balance” has to be struck, the court said it was not endorsing the use of artificial intelligence to produce deepfake videos, morphed images and the like to harm an individual’s dignity and acknowledged that AI was being used as a tool for voicing opinions across social media platforms in political context. The court also opined that prima facie, the lawsuit did not relate to protection of Chadha’s personality rights.
