A Right For All, A Remedy For The Famous: Navigating The Judicial Divergence And Legislative Vacuum In Indian Personality Rights Law
- IJLLR Journal
- Nov 20
- 1 min read
Suyash Kant Shukla, Faculty of Law, Banaras Hindu University
ABSTRACT
Personality rights in India, though grounded in the right to privacy under Article 21 of the Constitution, lack a clear and comprehensive statutory framework. As a result, courts have become the primary drivers in shaping the contours of these rights, particularly through disputes involving celebrities and commercial exploitation of identity. Recent decisions of the Delhi and Bombay High Courts have highlighted an unresolved doctrinal tension: whether personality rights are exclusive to celebrities or inherent in every individual. This ambiguity becomes even more critical in the digital era, where artificial intelligence and deepfake technologies enable effortless replication and unauthorized commercial use of personal identity traits, such as voice, image, or mannerisms. Existing statutory mechanisms—principally the Trade Marks Act, Copyright Act, Information Technology Act, and the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita— offer only fragmented protection and fail to address the proprietary and dignitary interests at stake. This paper examines the judicial evolution of personality rights in India, analyses the conflicting judicial interpretations on their scope, and argues for the necessity of a unified legislative framework that clearly delineates permissible limits, enforcement mechanisms, and safeguards against digital and AI-driven misuse of identity.
