A Delhi court on Tuesday refused to transfer to another judge the appeals filed by journalist Paranjoy Guha Thakurta and news outlet Newslaundry against an order restraining them from publishing allegedly defamatory material about industrialist Gautam Adani’s Adani Enterprises, Live Law reported.

Principal District and Sessions Judge Gurvinder Pal Singh said that the matter cannot be transferred to the judge who had set aside the restraining order in challenges filed by four other journalists on Thursday, as the arguments in Thakurta’s appeal had been made before district judge Sunil Chaudhary.

Chaudhary had said on Monday that it would be appropriate for the matter to be heard by Judge Ashish Aggarwal, who had already dealt with the case and passed orders, Bar and Bench reported.

This had led to the appeals being placed before Gurvinder Pal Singh for a decision on the matter.

The counsel representing Thakurta told the court that difficulty may arise if there are inconsistencies between the order passed by Chaudhary and what Aggarwal had ruled on Thursday, according to Live Law.

In response, the principal judge asked the counsel to submit Aggarwal’s order, saying that Chaudhary “will have benefit of other court”, Live Law reported.

A similar order was passed in the matter pertaining to Newslaundry, according to Live Law.

On September 6, Special Civil Judge Anuj Kumar Singh of the Rohini Courts had temporarily restrained Thakurta, four other journalists – Ravi Nair, Abir Dasgupta, Ayaskant Das and Ayush Joshi – and websites paranjoy.in, adaniwatch.org and adanifiles.com.au, from publishing allegedly defamatory reports about Adani Enterprises.

On Thursday, judge Aggarwal of the Rohini Courts quashed the lower court’s order against Nair, Dasgupta, Das and Joshi.

Another judge had reserved its judgement on a separate plea filed by Thakurta earlier in the day.

Aggarwal had observed that the articles had been in the public domain for a long time and therefore, the civil judge should have heard the journalists before directing them to take down the content.

The court had on September 6 passed the injunction in favour of Adani Enterprises, directing the defendants to expunge the material from their articles and social media posts. If expunging the content was not feasible, they must remove it within five days, the order had said.

However, the court had clarified that it was not issuing a blanket order restraining the defendants from “fair, verified and substantiated” reporting and from hosting, storing or circulating such articles, posts or webpage links.

The matter pertained to a defamation suit filed by Adani Enterprises alleging that journalists, activists and organisations had damaged the company’s reputation and cost its stakeholders billions of dollars.

Citing the September 6 order, the Union government had two days later directed 12 news outlets and independent journalists to take down allegedly defamatory content about Adani Enterprises.

Among those who got notices to remove such content were news portals Newslaundry, The Wire and HW News, Thakurta, journalists Ajit Anjum and Ravish Kumar, satirist Akash Banerjee and content creator Dhruv Rathee.

The ministry ordered 138 YouTube links and 83 Instagram posts to be removed. These included not just investigative reports, but also satirical videos and incidental mentions of the Adani Group.

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