From Persona to Power: Jurisdiction, Celebrity, and the Quiet Centralisation of Personality Rights in India

Authored by Vishal Vaibhav Singh and Aryan Jha, both fourth-year law students at National Law University, Odisha

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The Personality rights in India are no longer merely about protecting individual dignity or privacy; they are increasingly about controlling identity within a centralised legal and technological framework. This article argues that the rapid consolidation of personality-rights litigation before the Delhi High Court has not only shaped doctrine but has also altered the constitutional and jurisdictional foundations of these rights. What appears as efficient adjudication risks transforming personality rights into instruments of concentrated legal power.

The article has four sections, as follows: The first section shows how the Delhi High Court became the main judicial venue for personality rights cases through showing its structural development. The second section shows how personality rights developed from privacy rights into commercial rights through doctrinal changes. The third section examines how the Puttaswamy case expanded constitutional rights through new digital dimensions and the widespread use of injunctive relief. The final section presents different methods of comparison while supporting the need to re-establish territorial boundaries of personality rights to maintain constitutional order and judicial boundaries.

The Delhi High Court asked a pertinent question on 19 February 2026, during the hearing of an application filed by Jubin Nautiyal, Why Delhi? to singer Jubin Nautiyal, thus marking a small but important step in the development of personality rights jurisprudence in India. The issue was not whether Jubin Nautiyal had any enforceable personality rights, or even the rights to publicity. In the modern doctrinal environment, the proposition is virtually an assumption made by the courts. Rather, Justice Tushar Rao Gedela of the Hon'ble Delhi High Court came up with a more abiding question: why do such disputes have to be resolved in Delhi at all?

This intervention brings about a conflict with a more underlying organisational problem, one that is not resultant of celebrity, not of personality rights, but of the architecture of adjudication itself.

The swift growth of the personality-rights cases has not occurred uniformly throughout the nation. With the increase in claims, their geographic coverage has been reduced. Litigants are further shifting disputes concerning the identity, likeness, and control of celebrities to a single judicial institution, namely the Hon'ble Delhi High Court.

The initial jurisprudence of personality rights evolved with the Hon’ble Delhi High Court extending the interpretation of the definition of “mark” under Section 2(m) of the Trademarks Act, 1999. The Delhi High Court’s momentum for litigation under the Trademarks Act, 1999, gained traction with D.M. Entertainment v. Baby Gift House, wherein the Delhi High Court enjoined the unauthorised sale of dolls that resembled Daler Mehndi, holding that his persona had commercial value and its misuse constituted infringement and passing off, subsequent to which concentration is hard to neglect.

The entertainment business in India is based in Mumbai. There, the celebrity economy is developed in the city. Mumbai produces cultural production films, music, endorsements and popular personas. But it is a court in the national capital, not in Mumbai, that has come to prescribe the law of celebrity identity.

The inversion provokes doubt. Delhi has never emerged as the epicentre of personality rights litigation due to cultural proximity or industry rationality. This has been fuelled by constitutional framing, digital governance and institutional convenience. Litigants are making more claims about personalities using Article 21. Digital platforms and intermediaries based in Delhi are subject to government control. There it is concentrated in enforcement infrastructure ministries, regulators and compliance mechanisms.

The law in India at present is characterised by fragmentation and a reliance on doctrines developed for earlier media. There is no single statute that expressly defines personality or publicity rights, and courts instead proceed by applying an assortment of rules drawn from copyright, trade mark, passing off, the law of torts, privacy jurisprudence and criminal statutes. The Delhi High Court which initially started with granting protection by following the principle of “Ubi Jus, Ibi Remedium” by extending protection under the framework of a guard against passing off. For instance, in DM Entertainment, the Delhi High Court enjoined the unauthorised sale of dolls that resembled Daler Mehndi, holding that his persona had commercial value and its misuse constituted infringement and passing off, while in Titan Industries v. Ramkumar Jewellers held that the unauthorised use of Amitabh Bachchan's and Jaya Bachchan's photographs in jewellery advertisements was passing off.

Over time, this expansion has become self-reinforcing. The increasing number of litigants approaching the Delhi High Court has led to a corresponding rise in interim injunctions, which in turn strengthens the Court’s position as the preferred forum for personality-rights disputes. What initially appeared as procedural efficiency now shapes substantive law. Jurisdiction expands, injunctions widen, and the scope of personality rights begins to extend beyond clearly defined legal limits. This is not merely centralisation; it reflects a distortion of jurisdictional discipline, where repeated enforcement by a single court risks blurring normative boundaries and concentrating legal authority.

The Evolution of Personality Rights in India: From Privacy To Control

Personality rights do not thrive in isolation from the constitutional framework. Courts have endeavoured to draw inspiration from privacy law jurisprudence; however, the legitimacy of this endeavour derives from Article 21. In doing so, they have created a doctrine that appears private in form but rests on constitutional justification without resolving the tension between the two.

A. Privacy as a Constitutional Starting Point: R. Rajagopal v. State of Tamil Nadu

In the Rajagopal case, the Supreme Court located privacy within Article 21 and held that individuals can prevent the unauthorised publication of their life stories. Although the Court did not explicitly recognise personality rights, it supplied their constitutional foundation.

At the same time, the Court set two limits on this new law. First, it will not allow prior restraint on the press and will allow only post-publication remedies. Secondly, anyone who enters the public sphere loses a significant part of their right to privacy. This contradiction is a constitutional oddity in that high-profile persons have their right to privacy curtailed, and subsequent decisions allow additional restrictions on the control of their names and likenesses.

The first constitutional fault line is that if Article 21 protects individuals from unwanted publicity, one cannot use the same article as a basis for creating rights to control individuals' publicity for purposes of commercial exploitation.

B. Publicity Rights and the Limits of Article 21: ICC Development (International) Ltd. v. Arvee Enterprises

The Delhi High Court, in ICC Development, explicitly linked publicity rights to privacy under Article 21. Thus, it held that there is no doctrine of personality rights for corporations, and that the basis of the doctrine of publicity rights is personhood rather than commercial dealings. Yet the Court went beyond the issue of privacy by recognising commercial misappropriation.

The shift was not accompanied by a constitutional justification. The Court did not explain how Article 21, which protects dignity and autonomy, supports market-based exclusivity; instead, it treated commercial control as an extension of privacy. The result was that the doctrine began to overutilise constitutional language in a normative sense.

C. From Dignity to Property: Titan Industries Ltd. v. Ramkumar Jewellers

In the Titan Industries case, the Delhi High Court defined publicity rights as the right to control the commercial use of one’s identity. This marked a decisive shift. The Court moved away from privacy as a shield and reframed personality as an economic asset.

This transformation has constitutional ramifications. Article 21 of the Constitution protects dignity, autonomy, and personal liberty, not proprietary control of identity. In doing so, the Court failed to acknowledge the constitutional implications of its decision. Thus, the doctrine operates under a double mandate as it legitimises itself under Article 21 of the Constitution whilst operating as a market-based entitlement.

D. Constitutional Expansion Without Clarity: K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India

The Puttaswamy case further escalated this ambiguity. The Puttaswamy judgement intensified this ambiguity, and in his part of the judgement, Justice Kaul suggested that individuals should control the commercial use of their identities, while the judgement as a whole recognised privacy as a fundamental right grounded in dignity and autonomy. Courts have relied on this observation to constitutionalise personality rights. It is with reference to this observation that courts have constitutionalised the personality rights, albeit on shaky ground.

If privacy protects individuals from exposure, it cannot justify a right that facilitates selective exposure for profit. If privacy protects dignity and autonomy, extending it to cover the commercial exploitation of these values stretches its scope beyond its intended limits.

Courts have failed to solve this contradiction. Instead, they cite Article 21 of the Constitution as authority for their actions while extending personality rights to fields related to property and market control.

E. Injunctive Expansion and Constitutional Overreach: Anil Kapoor v. Simply Life India

The Delhi High Court’s decision in Anil Kapoor shows how this doctrinal ambiguity leads to expanded remedies. In addition to protecting name and image, the Court protected voice, likeness, style, and persona. The Court justified its expansion by grounding all the rights in dignity, livelihood, and privacy under Article 21  of the Constitution.

At the same time, the Court issued broad John Doe injunctions and platform-wide takedown orders. These remedies are prospective in nature and constrain unknown future actors across digital spaces.

This changes the constitutional situation critically. This is a constitutional shift in significance – courts no longer use Article 21 merely to remedy harm, but also to justify pre-emptive control of identity in digital environments. In doing so, they risk bypassing proportionality, free speech safeguards, and jurisdictional limits. The doctrine grows further as a constitutional protection tool, but more often as a regulatory control tool.

Comparative Perspectives on Containment

In the United States, personality protection is a state-law right of publicity that originated in Haelan Laboratories v. Topps (1953). However, courts have been unwilling to confer constitutional status on the right and have tended to view it as a vehicle that enables an individual to enjoy the fruits of his efforts. Balancing free speech remains crucial, with parody, satire, and newsworthiness serving as strong defences.

Continental Europe considers personality rights as an extension of human dignity. These rights cannot be transferred to other people, are non-heritable (in most cases), and are strictly limited. Regulation, but not constitutionalisation, applies to commercial exploitation, and the courts shun blanket injunctions.

The United Kingdom outrightly rejects any independent personality right. However, protection is offered through passing off, breach of confidence and data protection. In Irvine v. Talksport, endorsement value was protected, but no free-standing identity right was created, and jurisdiction remained strictly territorial.

The Jubin Nautiyal Hearing and Jurisdictional Pushback

Against this comparative backdrop, Justice Gedela’s questions assume particular significance. By asking whether Google is unavailable in Uttarakhand, the Court exposed the fragility of regulatory-location-based jurisdiction. Digital harm cannot automatically collapse territorial limits without converting Delhi into a universal personality-rights court, an outcome unsupported by comparative practice or constitutional principle.

Delhi’s Ascendancy and the Infrastructure of Enforcement

The rise in recent cases involving personality rights has generally been pegged to a mad rush by celebrities. This, however, is not an all-comprehensive explanation. It is explained by three structural transformations: democratisation of impersonation through AI tools has become a platform-based and algorithmic form of commercial abuse, and there is a lack of an all-encompassing legal solution.

Courts have ceased to perform only adjudicatory functions and are now designing enforcement mechanisms in response to widespread digital misuse. This is because there is more at stake than just celebrities' simple vulnerability to systemic harm enabled by technology. This is due to the scale, speed, and anonymity of digital platforms, which have necessitated a proactive and often overreaching response by courts, thereby redefining the limits of adjudication.

Personality-rights litigation in the Delhi jurisdiction has been established on four institutional dimensions: the constitutionalisation of Article 21 litigation, proximity to digital regulators and intermediaries, the welcoming procedural nature of broad interim injunctions, and the persuasiveness of precedent due to repeated interim orders. The de facto doctrine of entrenching Delhi's centrality has grown stronger in interim relief.

Personality-rights litigation has become infrastructure-based rather than territorially based. In addition, it is not the fact that the enforcement infrastructure is concentrated in Delhi that attracts celebrities to come there at all. This is indicative of environmental litigation and telecom litigation, where regulatory proximity is used to choose the forum. The change of institutional power to legal connection is so altered by jurisdiction.

A balance between personality claims and free speech, reservations about wholesale constitutionalisation, and reservations about John Doe orders introduced in the Bombay High Court have made it less appealing to those who want immediate and blanket relief. But such silence may be more favorable of the maintenance of the validity of the rights to personality by subjecting them to proportionality and doctrinal discipline.

Conclusion: Re-Territorialising Personality Rights

The Nautiyal hearing did not just ask why Delhi; it made us confront what happens when a right loses its place. Personality rights in India were not invented as tools of control. Courts and doctrine gradually converted them from privacy to dignity to proprietary control. At each stage, they invoked vulnerability as a justification for expansion, until vulnerability itself became a structural and rational shift from protection to power.

Delhi’s rise to being the default forum is the result of this change. Jurisdiction, therefore, is no longer based on the fact that harm occurred in a particular place but on the fact that enforcement is more appropriate in that place. In so doing, they deform personality rights into tools of institutional utility. Thus, personality rights are transformed into tools of institutional benefit for the already “incorporated” within legal and technological frameworks, rather than protecting the individual as they were traditionally intended.

The result of that transformation is a very obvious distortion. This transformation leads to a distortion: the courts no longer use personality rights only to resolve specific harms, but deploy them to enable broad, prospective control. This transformation yields a clear distortion; courts no longer confine personality rights to redress a particularised harm, but now fully “pack them with expansive prospective control capacity” (Skinner, 2017), p. When courts allow it to expand unchecked, they risk turning rights based on dignity into tools of dominance.