The Supreme Court on Tuesday closed the proceedings in a writ petition that sought ban on the usage of software application Zoom over security and privacy concerns.
The Bench of Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice M.M. Sundresh, after taking in view the minutes of a subsequent meeting of the National Security Council Secretariat held on December 28, 2020 regarding the security features of Zoom, observed that nothing survived in the plea and decided to close it.
Appearing for Zoom, Senior Advocate Arvind Datar contended that an inter-ministerial meeting was held to assess the safety features of Zoom, which did not find anything objectionable against the app.
The Senior Advocate said that the Apex Court had asked the company to file additional documents, however, there was nothing wrong with Zoom.
He submitted that the petitioners were seeking ban on Zoom. Why only Zoom, he asked, adding that Webex and Meet should also be banned, since they also served a similar purpose.
The Senior Advocate requested the Supreme Court to check the locus of the petitioner, who was a tuition teacher; for filing a PIL.
Filed by Advocate Wajeeh Shafiq on behalf of Advocates Divye Chugh and Nimish Chib, the plea had sought ban on Zoom app on the grounds that the government had itself issued notification against the meeting platform.
The Counsel appearing for the petitioner contended that the Union government had issued certain notifications against usage of Zoom. He said the government should itself notify that Zoom was good to use. He added that this was the only concern of the petitioner.
On April 16, 2020, the Cyber Coordination Centre under the Union Ministry of Home Affairs had issued an advisory on the secure use of Zoom Meeting Platform by private individuals.
The advisory stated that the platform was not for use by Government officers/ officials for official purposes as it was not safe.
(Case title: Harsh Chugh vs Union of India And Ors)