The Delhi High Court has raised concerns over the practice of legal research platforms such as Manupatra and SCC Online assigning their own paragraph numbers and making formatting changes to court judgments.
A Division Bench of Justice C. Hari Shankar and Justice Vinod Kumar observed that altering paragraph numbering, punctuation or the way a paragraph is divided could potentially affect how a judicial order is understood.
The observation came during the hearing of Indian Kanoon’s challenge to a single-judge decision concerning the removal or restriction of personal details from judgments available online.
Background of the Case
The dispute arose from a May 29 judgment concerning the “right to be forgotten” of persons who no longer wished to remain publicly associated with concluded legal proceedings.
The single judge had directed Indian Kanoon to restrict name-based searches relating to the concerned parties, while allowing the relevant judgments or orders to remain accessible through details such as case numbers, citations and court information.
Indian Kanoon challenged the direction, arguing that it unfairly restricted access to judicial records and affected its ability to provide free access to judgments.
Senior Advocate Arvind Datar, appearing for Indian Kanoon, submitted that the platform merely makes court judgments available to the public and should not be treated like a news organisation publishing reports about litigation.
He argued that restricting name-based access could make judicial records substantially harder to find.
Senior Advocate Akhil Sibal, appearing for an opposing party, however, submitted that restricting name-based searches would reduce the continuing online exposure of individuals involved in concluded proceedings. He pointed out that the judgments could still be located through case numbers and citations.
The Bench questioned whether requiring lawyers and members of the public to know a case number before locating a judgment would be a practical alternative.
The Court observed:
“Suppose this principle is made applicable across all legal software; your practice will go for a toss. If you are going to say that on Manupatra and SCC Online, you have to search by writ petition number, you will never be able to access any judgment.”
The Bench also expressed concern about changes made to the original formatting of judicial orders by legal databases.
Justice Hari Shankar observed that different databases sometimes use different paragraph numbering and that even punctuation or splitting of paragraphs could influence the impression conveyed by a judgment.
The Court further noted that name-based searches play an important role in legal research and cannot simply be replaced by searches requiring users to already know case-specific details.
The Division Bench indicated that it was inclined to stay the direction affecting Indian Kanoon, but did not pass an interim stay order at that stage.
The matter was instead listed for further hearing on the questions concerning access to judicial records and privacy.
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