In case of Whatsapp LLC v. CCI, Facebook v. CCI, following prima facie finding that WhatsApp's new privacy policy violated the Competition Act of 2000, the Competition Commission of India requested an investigation.
The appeals by WhatsApp and Meta were rejected by a single-judge court of Justice Navin Chawla in April last year because they lacked merit and also declined to end the CCI investigation.
WhatsApp committed during the previous round of hearings to delay enforcing its privacy policy until the Data Protection Bill is published. However, Additional Solicitor General N. Venkatraman, who was representing CCI, argued that the inquiry into WhatsApp's revised privacy policy could not be halted by a court order.
The CCI has acted prudently because it has the authority to investigate the privacy policy, and he had further informed the Court that there is no overlap between its investigation under competition law and the matter of a violation of a person's right to privacy that is currently being decided by the Apex Court.
However, in response to the aforementioned arguments, WhatsApp argued that under judicial protocol, nobody could launch an investigation while the country's top court (the Supreme Court) was considering the legality of its privacy policy.
WhatsApp had also maintained that the CCI could conduct its inquiry and is not ineligible under the law, but the agency must wait for the Supreme Court's decision.
Meta had argued that CCI could not have included it in its inquiry into the WhatsApp privacy policy issue simply because of the fact that it owned WhatsApp.
Observing that the privacy policy provisions on sharing customized data with Facebook firms were "neither fully transparent nor based on specific, voluntary consent of users," CCI had sent notices to both WhatsApp and its parent corporation.
The CCI had asserted prima facie that the policy violated Section 4 of the Competition Act by abusing its dominant position.
The privacy policy was described by the anti-trust regulator as "take-it-or-leave-it" rules set by a major messaging platform without giving users much information, and it was noted that the policy initially looked to be "unfair and unjustified."
Sangeeta Verma, a member of the CCI bench, Bhagwant Singh Bishnoi, a member, and Ashok Kumar Gupta, the chairperson, stated that "a complete and extensive investigation is required to identify the actual degree, breadth, and impact of data sharing through involuntary permission of users."
As a result, the Commission gave the Director General the order to cause an investigation into the situation in accordance with Section 26(1) of the Act. The Commission further instructed the DG to finish the inquiry and submit the inquiry report within 60 days of receiving this order.