The Bombay High Court has deprecated the “commercial exploitation” & illegal use of a woman’s photograph without her consent in government advertisements & issued notices to the Centre & four state governments.
The woman, Namrata Ankush Kawale, in her plea said her picture taken by a photographer, an acquaintance, was uploaded on the website ‘Shutterstock.com’ without her consent & knowledge.
The photo has since then been used unauthorisedly by the state governments of Maharashtra, Telangana, Karnataka & Odisha & the Union Ministry of Rural Development & some private entities on their websites, hoardings & other advertisements, she alleged.
A division bench of Justices G S Kulkarni & Advait Sethna, in its order on March 10, said the issues raised in the plea were “quite serious, considering the contemporary times of an electronic era & social media”.
“Prima facie, it appears to be a commercial exploitation of the petitioner’s photograph,” the HC said.
The bench issued notice to Shutterstock, a US based company that hosts a website with royalty-free stock photographs, & various state governments, including Maharashtra, Karnataka, Telangana & Odisha.
The notice was also issued to the Telangana Congress, the Union Ministry of Rural Development & a private entity, Total Dental Care Pvt Ltd, which had used the petitioner’s photograph.
It sought affidavits from all the respondents & posted the matter for further hearing on March 24.
The high court said the present case brings to fore a serious issue about unauthorised use of the woman’s photograph by various political parties & state governments in advertising their schemes.
The woman in her plea said that Tukaram Karve, a photographer from her village, had taken her picture & uploaded the same without her consent on Shutterstock website.
The state governments of Maharashtra, Telangana, Odisha & Karnataka, the Union Ministry of Rural Development & some private entities have used her photograph from the website without her consent for their advertisements & hoardings, she claimed.
The woman further said such illegal use of her photograph by the government was a breach of her fundamental rights.
She sought a direction to the respondents to be permanently restrained from using her photograph on their websites, social media platforms, advertisements & promotions.
(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the LatestLaws staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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