The micro-blogging platform WhatsApp has accepted before the Delhi High Court that the government is indeed the administrator in its case and that it will put its privacy policy update on hold until the Data Protection Bill came into force. This may pave a way to diffuse the confrontation between the micro-blogging giant and the union government of India particularly after the exit of aggressive Ravi Shankar Prashad Singh from the Info Technology ministry,
Significantly, this would be a positive development after the new Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw made it clear just on taking the charge of the ministry that law of the land is supreme and no one can afford to disrespect it.
Senior advocate Harish Salve, representing WhatsApp, submitted before a bench comprising Chief Justice D N Patel and Justice Jyoti Singh, We will not enforce it until the Data Protection Bill will come into force.
In our case the government is the administrator of the rules…we said okay, we will wait till the Bill. Salvo also informed that the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) has communicated to WhatsApp that it feels that some provisions of its privacy policy are against the Information Technology (Reasonable Security Practices and Procedures and Sensitive Personal Data or Information), Rules 2011.
In May, the court had issued a notice in the appeals filed by WhatsApp and Facebook challenging a single judge order refusing to set aside the CCI probe into the messaging platform’s privacy policy.
Meanwhile, the Apex Court on Friday refused to stay proceedings in the matter of multiple petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the Centre’s new IT rules before various High Courts.
The Centre had moved the Supreme Court seeking transfer of all petitions to it, citing multiplicity of proceedings. Several High Courts, including Delhi, Bombay, Madras and Kerala High Courts are hearing petitions against the IT rules.
The Centre in its plea said that the issue of regulating the OTT platform was pending before the top court. But the bench said: “We will not pass that order today. We are just tagging and list before an appropriate bench on July 16.”
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) has communicated to WhatsApp that it feels that its privacy policy is against the Information Technology (Reasonable Security Practices and Procedures and Sensitive Personal Data or Information), Rules 2011. He added that his client replied to the Ministry’s notice that WhatsApp will not limit functionality for some time and will put the privacy policy update on hold for the time being.
