On Tuesday, the Delhi High Court criticised Wikipedia for its “opinionated” page on news agency Asian News International, saying that it must stay neutral rather than sound like an online blog, Bar and Bench reported.

A bench of Justices Prathiba M Singh and Rajneesh Kumar Gupta was hearing a petition filed by Wikimedia Foundation, which runs the free online encyclopaedia, against a single-judge order from April 2 directing it to remove allegedly defamatory content about the news agency from its page.

“Let’s be honest, we all refer to Wikipedia,” Bar and Bench quoted the bench as saying on Tuesday. “I recall very clearly that when children are in high school, you can look at Wikipedia and teach children about it.”

The court noted that an encyclopaedia had to be neutral. “Wikipedia is doing a great service that way,” Bar and Bench quoted the order as saying. “If you start taking sides like this, then it becomes like any other blog.”

If Wikipedia says it is an intermediary, it cannot challenge a court’s decision on merits, it added.

“Under IT Rules, their job is only to give effect to what the court of law directs,” it said. “You cannot defend it on merits. If you are an intermediary and the court directs you to take down, you cannot even argue on merits.”

The bench refused to stay the April 2 order, The Indian Express reported. However, it stayed a part of the order asking Wikipedia to remove the protection status granted to the administrators of its page on ANI.

The court also said that while Wikipedia will remove the defamatory content, the news agency could also inform the platform about similar content, if it is published again on the platform. Wikipedia would have to take action again if it does, it added.

In his order on April 2, Justice Subramonium Prasad directed the Wikimedia Foundation to remove the allegedly defamatory content about ANI from the page in response to an interim application by the news agency seeking that the content be removed.

The plea was part of a Rs 2 crore defamation suit filed by the news agency. The suit concerns a page about ANI that says that the news agency has been criticised for serving as a “propaganda tool” for the current Union government.

ANI, in its suit, alleged that Wikimedia Foundation published false and defamatory content with malicious intent to tarnish the news agency’s reputation.

Prasad, in his order, said that the ANI page violated Wikipedia’s policy and added that the content was not neutral. He added that it was written based on “editorials and opinionated pages”.

The order also said that Wikipedia cannot evade responsibility for content on its platform by claiming to be just an intermediary.

“[Wikipedia] cannot completely wash its hands of the contents of the article on the ground that it is only an intermediary and cannot be held responsible for the statement that is published on its platform,” the court said in its judgement.

The order highlighted that the platform carries “higher” responsibility because it “professes itself to be an encyclopedia and people at large have a tendency to accept the statements made on [it] as gospel truth”.

At the hearing on Wednesday, Senior Advocate Akhil Sibal, representing Wikipedia, told the court that the April 2 order was based on the wrong premise that the content about the news agency was published in 2024, according to Bar and Bench.

The page had been the same since 2019 and the writers of the page were not employed or paid by Wikipedia, he said, adding that the injunction was extremely broad.

Advocate Sidhant Kumar, representing ANI, said he would not object if the page was changed back to the one that existed before February 26, 2019, when the edits in question were allegedly made.