On Friday, Senior Advocate Harish Salve told the Delhi High Court that WhatsApp will not enforce its privacy policies until the Data Protection Bill comes into force. On behalf of Facebook and WhatsApp, Salve said the new privacy policy is on hold.
During hearing at the Delhi High Court, Harish Salve said that “The government has asked to shut down the policy. We have said we will not enforce it till the Data Protection Bill is passed. That is open-ended because we don’t know when the Bill is going to come out.”
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He further stated that “We have said we will not do this for a while. Suppose the Bill allows me to do it, we will have completely different ramifications. He additionally said that the MeiTy feels WhatsApp’s privacy policy is against Information Technology Rules 2011.”
Salve said “We replied to MEITY’s notice seeking a response, saying that WhatsApp will not limit functionality for some time and continue to show users the updated version of its app.”
Harish Salve further pointed that the “challenge to the privacy policy and challenge to CCI [Competition Commission of India] order for probe are different”. “Eighty per cent to 90 per cent is related to the privacy policy challenge,” he said.
