Won’t stay WA privacy policy probe: Delhi HC | India News

NEW DELHI: In a setback to Facebook (now Meta) and WhatsApp, the Delhi HC on Thursday refused to stay a probe ordered by the Competition Commission of India (CCI) into the updated privacy policy of the messaging platform, introduced last year.
A bench of Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice Subramonium Prasad dismissed the appeals filed by Facebook and WhatsApp challenging a single judge’s order. The bench said the appeals were devoid of any merit and that the single judge’s order of April 2021 was well-reasoned.
The single judge of the HC had refused to interfere with the probe against WhatsApp and Facebook in March last year. Dismissing the petitions, the judge had opined that although it would have been “prudent” for the CCI to await the outcome of the petitions in the SC and the Delhi HC against WhatsApp’s new privacy policy, not doing so would not make the regulator’s order “perverse” or “wanting of jurisdiction”.
In its appeal, WhatsApp argued that CCI can’t probe a policy that has now been kept in abeyance as the company awaited the fate of the Data Protection Bill as well as the decision of the SC and the HC on issues concerning the legality of the policy. Facebook contended that there was no prima facie material in the case against it.