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On Monday, Kerala High Court dismissed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) seeking a ban on WhatsApp for not complying with the new IT rule, 2021.

Chief Justice S. Manikumar and Justice Shaji P. Chaly, comprised the bench that dismissed the petition on all prayers stated that the petition was ‘premature’.
As per the report of the Economic Times, the court stated that “…it was premature and should be the job of investigating agencies and courts to decide whether messages from WhatsApp were manipulated by users to not be used as evidence. “We are not inclined to entertain any of the prayers sought for, we are dismissing the writ petition.”[1]

The PIL alleged that WhatsApp had failed to follow the new IT Rules that were notified in February 2021. Accordingly, the PIL sought a total ban on the usage of the application.[2]

The PIL sought a ban on usage of the application, stating that due to non-compliance WhatsApp may fail to provide government agencies access to user messages, by failure to modifying the end-to-end encryption.

End-to-end encryption, essentially make the messages and the users non-traceable.

With the provision of end-to-end encryption, it was also alleged by the petitioner that WhatsApp is being used for antinational and antisocial purposes.

The petitioner while highlighting the fact that WhatsApp adheres to the privacy laws of the European Union, had also questioned the reasons behind not following the Indian laws.

Although the court has dismissed the petition in its entirety and not granted any of the prayers as sought by the petitioners.

Currently, a petition by WhatsApp contending the rules on basis of violation of the fundamental right to privacy is pending in the Delhi High Court.

Moreover, WhatsApp is, also facing a challenge to its privacy policy in the Supreme Court of India, which is alleged to violate the right to privacy. It is also being invested by the Competition Commission of India for alleged abusive behaviour and data sharing with Facebook.