In privacy policy dispute, Delhi HC stretches the date for Facebook and WhatsApp to answer CCI notice

The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has launched a review into the instant messaging app's new privacy policy, and the Delhi High Court on Monday extended the deadline for Facebook and WhatsApp to respond to two notifications filed by the CCI. The CCI's notifications dated June 4 and 8, 2021, respectively, requiring them to provide specific information for the purpose of an investigation have been disputed by WhatsApp and Facebook.

The hearings were delayed until March 30 by a bench consisting of Chief Justice D.N. Patel and Justice Jyoti Singh, who observed that the Data Protection law had not yet been finalized.

The court was considering Facebook and WhatsApp's arguments against a single-judge judgment rejecting their challenges against the CCI's new privacy policy investigation.

The Bench says, “Till then the time to file replies to the June 4 and June 8, last year, notices issued by CCI to the appellants [Facebook and WhatsApp] is extended.”

The court was considering Facebook and WhatsApp's arguments against a single-judge judgment rejecting their challenges against the CCI's new privacy policy investigation.

The court had previously provided time for social media networks to file responses to notifications, and the time has since been extended.

The Data Protection law was presented in Parliament, and the court had previously provided time to file answers to the notifications until October 11, 2021, but it could not be extended after that because the case was not taken up, according to senior counsel Harish Salve, who represents WhatsApp.

CCI's Additional Solicitor General Aman Lekhi argued that the Data Protection Bill is "irrelevant" to the case and that the case is about the provisions of the Competition Act relating to abuse of dominant position and inquiries into certain agreements and dominant positions of an enterprise, not about "privacy."

Facebook India's legal counsel on the other hand stated that he has submitted an application to be impleaded as a party in the lawsuit. The court, on the other hand, told him that he needed to file a new petition.

The issue concerns Facebook and WhatsApp's appeals of a single judge's decision dismissing their appeals of the CCI's investigation into the instant messaging app's revised privacy policy.

On May 6, 2021, the high court's Division Bench released a notification on the appeals and requested the Centre to respond. Though it would have been "prudent" for the CCI to wait for the outcome of petitions in the Supreme Court and the Delhi High Court challenging WhatsApp's new privacy policy, the single judge said on April 22 last year that doing so would not make the regulator's order "perverse" or "wanting of jurisdiction."

The court had ruled that the applications filed by Facebook and WhatsApp to stop the CCI's inquiry had no validity.

The CCI had argued before the single judge that it was not looking into the alleged infringement of people’s privacy that the Supreme Court was looking into.