Privacy policy: Delhi HC rejects FB, WhatsApp pleas against CCI order

New Delhi, April 22

The Delhi High Court on Thursday dismissed petitions filed by Facebook and WhatsApp against an order passed by the Competition Commission of India (CCI) for a probe into WhatsApp’s new privacy policy.

Though it would have been “prudent” for the CCI to await the outcome of petitions in the Supreme Court and the Delhi High Court against WhatsApp’s new privacy policy, but not doing so would not make the regulator’s order “perverse” or “wanting of jurisdiction”, Justice Navin Chawla said.

WhatsApp and Facebook had challenged the CCI’s March 24 order directing a probe into the new privacy policy, contending that when the top court and the Delhi High Court were looking into the privacy policy, then CCI ought not to have “jumped the gun” and intervened in the issue. The CCI’s decision was an abuse of the commission’s suo motu jurisdiction, they had submitted. — TNS