WhatsApp representatives on Monday advised the Excellent Courtroom that they are going to conform to the Pageant Fee of India’s (CCI) instructions that required the messaging platform to offer customers higher regulate over whether or not their records is shared with different Meta corporations.
They wanted to withdraw an period in-between software difficult the Nationwide Corporate Legislation Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) order that known as for the enforcement of such instructions through the CCI on requiring a user-consent-based framework for records sharing.
A Bench comprising Leader Justice of India Surya Kant, Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul Pancholi accordingly authorised WhatsApp and Meta to withdraw the packages. The courtroom was once listening to appeals coming up from the CCI’s motion towards WhatsApp’s 2021 privateness coverage and next lawsuits sooner than the NCLAT.
Senior Recommend Kapil Sibal, showing for WhatsApp and Meta, knowledgeable the courtroom that the corporate had filed a sworn statement explaining its data-sharing practices and would enforce the NCLAT’s clarified instructions at the similar throughout the timeline set through the appellate tribunal.
He advised the Bench that WhatsApp would now not press its period in-between packages looking for a keep of the instructions because the corporate had made up our minds to conform to them through March 16.The Courtroom recorded the submission and pushed aside the packages as no longer pressed, whilst clarifying that the primary attraction filed through WhatsApp at the validity of its 2021 privateness coverage would stay pending.
The Courtroom additional directed WhatsApp to report a compliance file at the user-data-sharing instructions sooner than the CCI as required through the NCLAT.The CCI’s attraction within the subject additionally stays pending sooner than the Excellent Courtroom. The regulator is looking for revival of a five-year ban on sharing WhatsApp consumer records for promoting functions – a treatment that have been put aside through the NCLAT.
All the way through the listening to, the CCI emphasized that the case raises pageant legislation issues distinct from privateness and knowledge coverage problems.The Courtroom additionally rejected an intervention software filed through a person claiming to look as a client, looking at that the dispute is between the CCI and the firms and that the applicant was once unfastened to pursue therapies according to the legislation.
In January 2021, WhatsApp knowledgeable customers about updates to its phrases of carrier and privateness coverage, efficient from February 8, 2021. The notification said that customers will have to settle for the brand new phrases to proceed the use of the platform. In contrast to the former privateness coverage from August 25, 2016, which allowed customers to choose out of knowledge sharing with Fb, the up to date coverage made records sharing with Meta necessary.
The CCI introduced an investigation and, in November 2024, held that WhatsApp’s 2021 privateness coverage replace amounted to abuse of dominance beneath the Pageant Act, 2002. It directed WhatsApp to not percentage records accrued on its platforms with Meta or its merchandise for 5 (5) years.
This order was once challenged in NCLAT through WhatsApp and Meta. In November 2025, the NCLAT partially dominated in favour of WhatsApp through atmosphere apart the CCI’s discovering that Meta had leveraged a dominant place within the OTT messaging marketplace to offer protection to its place in on-line show promoting.Alternatively, NCLAT upheld the ₹213.14 crore penalty imposed on WhatsApp through the contest regulator. WhatsApp and Meta approached the Excellent Courtroom to problem the penalty imposed on them.
At the ultimate date of listening to, the Courtroom strongly criticised WhatsApp and Meta (which owns WhatsApp) for the messaging platform’s ‘take it or go away it’ privateness coverage, including that the coverage seems to permit records robbery.
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