Kriti Agrawal
On Thursday the Delhi High Court rejected WhatsApp’s petition challenging the Competition Commission of India’s (CCI) decision to investigate its controversial new privacy policy.
WhatsApp argued that since the question of its privacy policy was before the Supreme Court, the CCI did not need to order the investigation.
Not only WhatsApp, but also Facebook, which owns the instant messaging app, filed a similar petition in response to the competition watchdog’s March 24 decision.
According to WhatsApp, the CCI “jumped the gun” and initiated the investigation when there was no competition problem. It said that because the issue of user personal data and the sharing of personalized data was already before the Supreme Court, CCI should not have interfered.
The High Court, on the other hand, stated that the CCI’s investigation order could not be quashed simply because it did not await the outcome of the pending cases before the Supreme Court and the High Court.
CCI, on the other hand, argued that the probe order was issued to determine if access to data would result in misuse of a dominant position.
The commission said that it was investigating the instant messaging app’s new privacy policy, which could result in “excessive data collection” of users, as well as the use and sharing of data in an anti-competitive sense.
The commission said that it was unconcerned about the question of privacy since the Supreme Court was already dealing with it.
