Supreme Court rejects PIL to ban WhatsApp

The Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed a public interest litigation (PIL) petition seeking directions to the Central government to ban the operations of WhatsApp for its refusal to comply with the new Information Technology Rules (IT Rules) [Omanakuttan KG v WhatsApp Applications Services Private Limited and ors].

A Bench of Justices MM Sundresh and Aravind Kumar passed an order to this effect today.

The petitioner, one Omanakuttan KG, had earlier moved the Kerala High Court seeking directions to the Central government to ban WhatsApp if it does not comply with the orders issued by government authorities.

Omanakuttan filed the plea after WhatsApp moved the Delhi Court challenging the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021(IT rules).

The Kerala High Court in June 2021 dismissed that PIL for being 'premature'.

This prompted the present PIL before the Supreme Court.

Before the High Court, the petitioner had submitted that WhatsApp had claimed before the Delhi High Court that it is not amenable to IT Rules, 2021 because the end-to-end encryption of the app prevents it from tracing origins of messages.

However,WhatsApp's privacy policy itself says that it will store messages sent by users in certain circumstances and it also has access to their contacts and other information.

Further, the app lacks security, is anti-national and filled with anti-social elements who spread fake news and images.

It was highlighted that the reliance placed on messaging services such as WhatsApp for serving court summons and legal notices is also at stake as the authenticity of such messages cannot be guaranteed.