Can Writ Succeed Against Private Digital Platforms? The Delhi High Court Answers in Janta Live v. Google LLC

Introduction

The Delhi High Court’s decision in Janta Live Press Network Pvt. Ltd. v. Google LLC & Anr. addresses a recurring question in public law: when can the High Court’s writ jurisdiction under Article 226 of the Constitution be invoked against a private digital platform?

The dispute arose from Google’s disabling of the petitioner’s Gmail account following suspected unauthorised access. The legal issue before the Court was, whether the platform’s specific function in question, that of providing and disabling an email account, had the character of a public function or involved the discharge of a public duty. The Court held that it did not.

Background

Janta Live Press Network Pvt. Ltd., the petitioner, operates a media business under the name ‘Janta Live News’, including a YouTube news channel. According to the petitioner, third parties gained unauthorised access to the Gmail account used for the business, following which Google disabled the account for “unusual activity”. The petitioners sought restoration through Google’s support channel and lodged a complaint with the Cyber Police Station, but access was not restored. They then invoked Article 226, seeking a direction from the Court requiring Google to verify their recovery credentials and restore full access to the account.

Issue before the Court

A writ may lie against a private body where the impugned action involves the performance of a public function or the discharge of a public duty. Relying on G. Bassi Reddy v. International Crops Research Institute, (2003) 4 SCC 225, the Court described a public function as one similar or closely related to a function performed by the State in its sovereign capacity. This may include a function outsourced by the State or a service so closely connected with the State’s obligations that it assumes a public character. A service may be commercially essential to a user and socially pervasive, yet remain outside writ jurisdiction if the challenged function is not, one undertaken on behalf of the State or otherwise imbued with a public duty.

The Court observed that neither opening an email account nor suspending or disabling it on security grounds, in themselves amounted to the discharge of a public duty. The petitioners’ dependence on the account for their media business did not change the juridical character of Google’s function; nor did Gmail’s widespread use.

The inquiry is fact-specific and directed at the particular function under challenge, rather than at Google’s status in the abstract. The same entity may therefore be amenable to writ jurisdiction in respect of one activity but not another. The Court distinguished XYZ v. Union of India & Ors. by examining both the nature of the impugned function and the relief sought. In XYZ, the grievance arose from the continued online availability and name-based searchability of judicial records, and the petitioners sought de-indexing of those records from search results and masking of personal identifiers. The dispute therefore engaged informational privacy and Google’s search and indexing functions in relation to the dissemination and accessibility of judicial information in the digital domain. In Janta Live, by contrast, the petitioners did not challenge Google’s role in organising access to public records or seek relief directed at the public accessibility of judicial information. Their claim was confined to restoration of a privately provided email account following a security-related suspension. The subject matter, the function attributed to Google and the relief claimed were therefore materially different. The decision does not hold that Google is invariably beyond writ jurisdiction; it holds that no public duty was demonstrated in relation to the specific account-restoration function at issue.

The petitioners also sought to establish the requisite public element by contending that Google’s statutory obligations under the Information Technology Act, 2000 and the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021supported the maintainability of the writ petition. However, the Court held that obligations concerning intermediary compliance and grievance redressal may regulate a private service provider, but they do not automatically transform disputes over account restrictions, security incidents or alleged customer-support failures into the performance of a public function.

What the ruling establishes

The Delhi High Court dismissed the petition as not maintainable. The principal takeaway is that a private digital platform does not become amenable to writ jurisdiction merely because its services are widely used, operationally important or governed by statutory obligations. The claimant must identify a public duty in the specific function under challenge. For future challenges involving digital platforms, pleadings will therefore need to do more than establish market reach, user dependence or regulatory non-compliance; they must connect the impugned activity to a function undertaken on behalf of the State, a duty having a distinctly public character, or another recognized public-law basis for intervention.