Supreme Court seeks response from WhatsApp

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday issued notice to Centre and WhatsApp on a plea to appoint a grievance officer to enable subscribers to file complaints or grievances and comply with tax and other laws of India.

A bench of Justices Rohinton Nariman and Ms. Indu Malhotra issued notice on a petition filed by Centre for Accountability and Systemic Change (CASC) seeking response in two weeks. It said WhatsApp is the biggest messaging platform in India wherein it has more than 20 crore active users. As per market reports, WhatsApp has per user value of around $42, which makes it a Rs 5.76 lakh crore company, i.e. greater than any Indian company.

Yet, the petitioner said WhatsApp does not comply with provision mandating Grievance Officer and other laws of India. As per National Crime Records Bureau, in 2014-16, there have been 72,829 incidents of offences against public tranquility and a total of 3,64,526 persons were arrested for the same in 2016.

It said growth of such rumour based crimes are directly proportional to growth of user base of messaging services like WhatsApp, which continue to remain unregulated, not because of lack of laws, but absolute executive apathy. This Court has suggested that a new offence on lynching may be created and an appropriate punishment may be prescribed for the same.

It said on the one hand, authorities are partnering with WhatsApp, while on the other, it has been reported that WhatsApp is not co-operating with Indian intelligence agencies in their probe on terrorist activities. WhatsApp is a foreign company with no office or servers in India. To run Payments Service in India, WhatsApp is obligated to have its office and payments in India. Moreover, it is also required to have a Grievance Officer for users in India.

The petitioner submitted that Whatsapp is being allowed to continue with its payments and other services, without any checks. Rumour based crimes, especially lynching have increased over the last few years. Growth of such crimes is directly proportional to growth of user base of messaging services like WhatsApp, which continue to remain unregulated.

In 2012, rumours caused a mass exodus of persons from Northeast from Bengaluru. In June 2014, mob caused rampage on the streets of Pune because of circulation of morphed images of Hindu gods on WhatsApp.

In typical knee jerk reactions, Governments, be it at State or Centre has taken the step of shutting down the Internet for combating the dangerous aspects of Social Media.

The Information Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines) Rules, 2011 have been notified for more than 7 years, yet the authorities have not been able to get intermediaries to comply with Indian laws. It is submitted that law has to be enforced to make it effective. Hence the need for a direction to WhatsApp to appoint Grievance officer for India to address the complaints and grievances of subscribers.