A fresh legal challenge before the Delhi High Court has opened another front in the escalating dispute around video clips from a hearing involving Arvind Kejriwal, with a public interest litigation seeking contempt action against the AAP leader, several party figures and journalist Ravish Kumar over the alleged unauthorised recording and circulation of court proceedings. The petition, moved by advocate Vaibhav Singh, centres on visuals from an April 13 hearing before Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma, where Kejriwal had appeared in person to press for the judge’s recusal. The plea asks the court to treat the circulation of those clips as a serious breach of judicial discipline rather than a mere social media controversy. It seeks directions for removal of the videos already in circulation, restraint against any further sharing or reposting, and a deeper inquiry into what the petitioner describes as a coordinated effort to project the judiciary as politically influenced. The petition names Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia, Sanjay Singh, Sanjeev Jha, Punardeep Sawhney, Jarnail Singh, Mukesh Ahlawat, Vinayy Mishra, Congress leader Digvijaya Singh and Ravish Kumar among the respondents, along with major technology platforms.
At the centre of the case is the claim that the clips were recorded and disseminated in violation of the Delhi High Court’s governing framework for virtual and electronic court material. The petition relies on the Electronic Evidence and Video Conferencing Rules, 2025, which bar recording or publication of proceedings unless the court expressly permits it. That regulatory point is likely to matter as much as the political context, because the court will be examining not only who posted the videos but whether the original capture itself was unlawful under binding court rules.
Chronology has become crucial. Singh says he first approached authorities on April 15, complaining that the footage was already circulating and urging takedown action. Court administration then moved separately, and the high court directed police to take steps to remove unauthorised recordings connected to the hearing from social media. That earlier intervention has strengthened the petitioner’s argument that the present PIL is not speculative; it follows an official acknowledgment that the clips should not have remained online.
The PIL also lands immediately after a sharply worded ruling by Justice Sharma rejecting the recusal request that triggered the confrontation. In that judgment, pronounced on April 20, the judge dismissed allegations of bias and used unusually direct language to defend both personal credibility and the institution of the court. The order said the litigant had effectively put the judge and the institution “on trial” and warned that a courtroom could not become a “theatre of perception”. Those observations have widened the stakes beyond one excise-policy proceeding, placing the dispute in the larger frame of judicial authority, litigant conduct and the role of public messaging around live legal disputes.
That broader institutional angle explains why the matter has drawn attention well beyond the immediate parties. Indian courts have steadily expanded digital access, virtual hearings and electronic filing, but they have also tightened controls over how proceedings are recorded, reproduced and redistributed. The tension is no longer simply between openness and secrecy. It now runs between transparency on one side and the risk of selective clipping, politicised amplification and pressure campaigns on the other. In a polarised environment, a short courtroom excerpt can quickly be recast as evidence of judicial hostility or favour, even when it captures only a fragment of a longer exchange.
For Kejriwal, the controversy compounds an already adversarial legal battle linked to the Delhi excise policy case. For the court, the issue is whether online dissemination of hearing footage crosses the line from commentary into interference with the administration of justice. For social media platforms, the PIL renews pressure to act more quickly when court-related content is challenged as unlawful. Singh has said his complaints to Google, Meta and X did not produce effective removal, a claim that may sharpen scrutiny of platform compliance where judicial material is involved.