The Delhi High Court has turned down an interim relief request by BJP’s MP Raghav Chadha in his defamation petition and issued a direction to remove six posts on social media that it termed profane and vulgar, which were reportedly created by artificial intelligence.
Hearing Chadha’s petition, Justice Subramonium Prasad noted that the political leaders must be ready to take abuse, be it through satirical or critical mediums.
The court noted that in politics, “humour on change in alliance of political party, governance, policy and related affairs, is part and parcel of politics itself and as such public figure must tolerate satirical criticism as a part and parcel of professional activity.
Raghav Chadha had complained that a coordinated online campaign with manipulated videos and deepfakes, along with defamatory content, was launched in order to harm his reputation after he was ousted as the Deputy Leader of AAP in the Rajya Sabha and later became part of the BJP. He’s asking to have his posts taken down from the web and his personality rights protected.
The court, however, found that the majority of the 52 social media posts that Chadha has been sued over were “satirical” criticisms of his political choices and “shift in political allegiance.
Most of the allegedly defamatory material, the court noted, “seems to have been satirical statements about the plaintiff’s political choices. Decisions by the plaintiff about politics will likely please people as well as anger them.
Concurrently, the High Court took up six posts, some of which had been created by AI, striking them down as prima facie profane and vulgarians and excluded them from the category of “acceptable” satire.
In addition, the court said Chadha’s petition did not raise any “significant and substantial” challenge to the personality rights protections, which was rejected, but not based on the objectionable AI-generated content.