In a significant move to check the misuse of courtroom recordings, the Supreme Court has barred the extraction, editing, sharing, re-posting, uploading and monetisation of audio-video recordings of judicial proceedings on social media and other digital platforms without prior permission. The interim order was passed on 24 July 2026 by a Bench of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice V. Mohana in Harshita Grover v. Union of India & Others (W.P.(C) No. 751/2026). Crucially, the Court clarified that its direction will not affect bona fide news reporting of court proceedings.
What the Supreme Court ordered
The Bench directed, by way of interim relief, that there shall be no extraction, modification, dissemination, posting, re-posting, uploading or monetisation of audio or video recordings of judicial proceedings on social media or other digital platforms without the prior permission of the Registrar General of the concerned High Court or the Secretary General of the Supreme Court.
In plain terms, anyone who wishes to clip, edit, circulate or earn revenue from recordings of court hearings must now obtain permission from the designated court authority beforehand. The order is interim in nature and operates while the larger petition is heard, but its practical effect is immediate: the vast ecosystem of edited courtroom clips that circulates on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X now stands on a very different legal footing.
Background: a PIL on the misuse of livestreamed hearings
The order came in a public interest litigation filed under Article 32 of the Constitution by journalist Harshita Grover. The petition seeks guidelines to regulate the clipping, editing, dissemination and monetisation of audiovisual recordings of court proceedings on digital platforms. Its central grievance is that while livestreaming and video-conferencing of hearings were introduced to advance the principles of open justice and transparency, the absence of any regulatory framework has allowed those recordings to be weaponised.
According to the petition, isolated courtroom exchanges, oral observations and preliminary remarks are routinely lifted out of long hearings, stripped of context, and packaged with misleading captions, clickbait headlines and sensational commentary to maximise engagement and advertising revenue. The result, it argues, is that judges, advocates and litigants are exposed to trolling, vilification and reputational harm, while the public is fed distorted narratives about what actually happens in court.
The concerns that moved the Court
During the hearing, Senior Advocate Dr. Vikas Singh, appearing for the petitioner, made clear that he had no objection to livestreaming as such, but was concerned about the misuse of edited clips. He pointed to instances where selectively cut clips from hearings had gone viral, in one case turning a courtroom episode into a source of ridicule for the judiciary among lay viewers.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta supported the request for interim protection and flagged a striking new danger: artificial intelligence. He warned that edited courtroom videos could be manipulated so that the words spoken by judges and lawyers are altered while their authentic lip movements and voices are retained — a deepfake risk that makes unregulated circulation of recordings especially hazardous. The Solicitor General also noted that clips are frequently extracted selectively to push a particular narrative, distorting the true character of the proceedings.
The Bench was receptive to these concerns. Justice Joymalya Bagchi observed that regulating data has become one of the biggest challenges in the digital space, and suggested that livestreaming ought to be treated as an exception rather than the norm. He remarked that court proceedings cannot be allowed to become a round-the-clock entertainment channel, and noted that access links granted for virtual hearings are often shared indiscriminately and themselves require regulation. The Chief Justice agreed that misinformation arising from distorted reporting was a growing concern, observing that even his own remarks had, on occasion, been misconstrued and attributed to him inaccurately.
What the order does not do
Importantly, the Court was careful to preserve the core of open justice. It expressly clarified that the interim direction will not affect news reporting of judicial proceedings. The petition, too, disclaims any intention to curtail open justice or fair reporting; what it seeks are reasonable safeguards against unauthorised clipping, editing, dissemination and commercial exploitation, so that transparency is retained without permitting distortion. The order therefore targets the unauthorised commercial and social-media circulation of recordings — not journalism, and not the principle that justice must be seen to be done.
Directions and the road ahead
Alongside the interim restraint, the Bench issued notice on the petition and took several steps to build a fuller record. It impleaded all the High Courts and directed them to submit reports on their adoption of the Supreme Court's livestreaming guidelines and on the impact of continuous livestreaming of proceedings. The Union Government was directed to place before the Court a proposal identifying the nodal ministries that could implement the reliefs sought. Notice was also issued to social media intermediaries, including Meta and X, whose platforms host the bulk of the circulating content.
These directions signal that the Court is not merely reacting to a single viral incident but is examining whether a comprehensive framework — involving the judiciary, the executive and the platforms — is needed to govern the life of a courtroom recording once it leaves the courtroom.
The wider context
Livestreaming of court proceedings in India grew out of the push for transparency and open justice, with the Supreme Court itself embracing live telecast of Constitution Bench and other important hearings in recent years. The present petition argues that this welcome transparency was never meant to convert judicial proceedings into revenue-generating digital content. It draws on comparative practice, pointing to the copyright terms and conditions that govern audiovisual recordings of the United Kingdom Supreme Court, and suggests that India could adopt similar safeguards to prevent distortion and commercial misuse while keeping proceedings open to the public.
The petition also situates the problem within a pattern: it refers to a 2024 controversy over remarks by a Karnataka High Court judge that were later said to have been reported out of context, the Bar Council of India's 2025 concerns over unethical legal advertising and misleading social-media promotion, and a request by the Supreme Court Advocates-on-Record Association for guidelines on videography and content creation within court premises.
What it means in practice
For the large number of channels, pages and creators that build audiences around edited courtroom clips, the order is a clear warning. Extracting, editing, uploading or monetising hearing recordings without prior permission from the Registrar General of the concerned High Court or the Secretary General of the Supreme Court is now prohibited under the interim direction. Platforms that host such content have been put on notice, and are likely to face takedown and compliance expectations as the matter develops.
For working journalists, the position is more comfortable: genuine news reporting of proceedings is expressly protected. The dividing line the Court appears to be drawing is between reporting and reproduction-for-profit — between informing the public about what a court did, and slicing a hearing into decontextualised, monetised fragments.
- Content creators: Do not clip, edit, re-post or monetise recordings of hearings without prior written permission from the designated court authority.
- Journalists and media: Fair, contextual reporting of proceedings remains permissible; the order does not curb news coverage.
- Lawyers and litigants: Access links to virtual hearings should not be shared indiscriminately, as the Court has flagged such sharing for regulation.
- Platforms: Expect a compliance framework to emerge, given that notice has been issued to intermediaries including Meta and X.
Conclusion
The interim order in Harshita Grover v. Union of India reflects a careful balancing exercise. On one side is the constitutional value of open justice, which livestreaming was designed to serve; on the other is the reality that recordings, once online, can be edited, decontextualised, weaponised and — with the arrival of AI-driven manipulation — even falsified. By restraining unauthorised circulation and monetisation while expressly protecting news reporting, the Supreme Court has sought to preserve transparency without allowing it to be turned against the institution it was meant to illuminate. The final shape of the safeguards will depend on the responses of the High Courts, the Union Government and the platforms — but the direction of travel is now unmistakable.
This article is for general information only and does not constitute legal advice. As the order is interim and the petition is pending, readers should follow further developments and refer to the official record for the precise terms of any direction.
