Access the Bengaluru court’s updated court order here: [ PDF ]
A Bengaluru Urban Court temporarily ordered “to block all the content from their social media platform regarding Plaintiff [Pawan Kalyan] which is defamatory in nature till next date of hearing,” while passing the John Doe gag order in favor of the Andhra Pradesh (AP) Deputy Chief Minister. The Bengaluru court passed the order on June 11; LiveLaw was the first to report this.
The court scheduled the hearing of this case for next month, July 24, 2026. It means social media platforms must block the allegedly defamatory content until July 24.
The platforms involved are X, Google and Meta.
Allegations of public land encroachment behind the plea: Actor-turned-politician and AP DyCM Pawan Kalyan approached the court against social media content targeting him. This content includes “Articles, allegations, statements, videos” related to allegations of public land and water body encroachment by Pawan Kalyan.
The plea, according to the LiveLaw report, states that between May 29 and June 1, 2026, multiple content creators published videos, social media posts, and articles containing “grave and highly damaging allegations” alleging that the plaintiff illegally encroached upon Kodi Cheruvu, a local water body in Ranga Reddy, Telangana.
Claims that IT Rules grievance redressal mechanisms didn’t work: Kalyan claims that they exhausted the grievance redressal mechanisms provided by X and YouTube under the IT Rules, 2021 and therefore approached the court for relief of takedowns/blocking of so-called defamatory content.
The court updated the previous order to include URLs: This judgment was given by the Bengaluru Additional City Civil and Sessions Judge. The court had already directed the defendants to stop publishing or circulating the content. But that earlier order wasn’t specific enough because it didn’t list all the URLs and online sources where the content was uploaded. The court then updated its order to include the URLs. The court update shared by LiveLaw contains no URLs, and MediaNama could not download the previous court orders from the Bengaluru Urban Courts e-Courts website.
You can track this using the case number: O.S. 3986/2026
Throwback to when Bengaluru passed a gag order removing over 8,000 links: In July 2025, a Bengaluru court ordered the restriction of several media houses and content creators from publishing “defamatory” material about the Sri Manjunathaswamy temple in Dharmasthala or its administration, and ordered the deletion or de-indexing of any existing such material. Read MediaNama’s reporting here.
These targeted 8,842 links, including:
Personality rights doctrine is being used to deal with defamatory content: Interestingly (and, quite threateningly), many individuals are approaching courts, seeking the takedown or blocking of allegedly “defamatory” content, citing the doctrine of personality rights, including Pawan Kalyan. A few such cases are:
When Delhi HC drew a line between defamatory content and free speech: Addressing the issue of invoking the personality rights doctrine, which has no statutory basis, Delhi HC, in May 2026, rejected now-BJP member Raghav Chadha’s petition seeking John Doe injunctions against alleged defamatory and non-consensual AI deepfakes. “Unlike other judgments, here it’s just criticism taken on decisions taken by you in the political arena…It is a comment by a person criticising a political decision,” the court noted and stated that criticism of political decisions does not automatically constitute an infringement of personality rights and that previous judgments on personality rights may not be relevant to this case. Read MediaNama’s report here.
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