The Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed a public interest litigation (PIL) that sought directions to the Union of India to ban the operations of WhatsApp for its refusal to comply with the new Information Technology (IT) Rules.
The Bench of Justice MM Sundresh and Justice Aravind Kumar passed the order on a petition filed by one Omanakuttan KG.
The petitioner had earlier approached the Kerala High Court seeking directions to the Central government to ban WhatsApp if it failed to comply with the orders issued by government authorities.
WhatsApp then moved the Delhi High Court challenging the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 (IT rules).
In June 2021, the Kerala High Court dismissed the PIL, calling it ‘premature’.
The petitioner submitted before the Kerala High Court that WhatsApp had apprised the Delhi High Court that it was not amenable to IT Rules, 2021 because the end-to-end encryption of the app prevented it from tracing the origins of messages.
However, WhatsApp’s privacy policy itself said that it would store messages sent by users in certain circumstances and that it also had access to their contacts and other information, noted the plea. It alleged that WhatsApp lacked security, was anti-national and filled with anti-social elements who spread fake news & images.
Omanakuttan KG contended that the reliance placed on messaging services such as WhatsApp for serving court summons and legal notices was also at stake as the authenticity of such messages could not be guaranteed.