Tl;dr
WhatsApp’s 2016 privacy policy has been the subject of a long standing Court challenge before the Delhi High Court, then the Supreme Court, and now a 5-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court of India led by Justice K. M. Joseph. WhatsApp has since updated this policy in 2021, which is also the subject of challenge in the present proceedings. IFF is an intervenor in these proceedings, which have now come up for final arguments, where time has been provided for the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2022 to be taken up in the budget session of the Parliament. However, in the interim, the Supreme Court has directed that users who have not yet accepted the privacy policy may continue to use WhatsApp without fear of their accounts being terminated under WhatsApp’s take-it-or-leave-it approach to the 2021 policy.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://internetfreedom.in/supreme-court-directs-whatsapp-to-allow-users-to-continue-using-whatsapp-without-accepting-its-2021-privacy-policy/