The Competition Commission of India had earlier said that users were forced to share data for continued access to WhatsApp messaging services.
| Photo Credit: PTI
Instant messaging platform WhatsApp maintained in the Supreme Court on Monday (February 23, 2026) that it is not “quite right” to say the online entity is sharing data with other Meta platforms.
Appearing before a three-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, senior advocate Kapil Sibal, for WhatsApp and parent company Meta, said its technology was very clear and put a premium on privacy. “There is no question of violating the law,” Mr. Sibal submitted.
He further submitted that the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, 2023, comprehensively addressed the privacy concerns raised in the Supreme Court.
The court was hearing petitions filed by Meta and WhatsApp against a National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) decision to uphold a ₹213.14 crore penalty imposed by the Competition Commission of India (CCI).
The CCI had found WhatsApp’s ‘take-it-or-leave-it’ approach in its 2021 privacy policy an abuse of its market dominance. It found the prior consent sought from users to share their data with Meta “manufactured”. It had concluded that users were forced to share data for continued access to WhatsApp messaging services.
In an appeal last year, the NCLAT concluded that the “core principle is to remove exploitation by restoring user choice”.
“The users can be given choice if users retain the right to decide what data is collected from them, for which purposes, and for how long. We had also stated in our findings that any non-essential collection or cross-use (like advertising etc.) can occur only with the concerned user’s express and revocable consent,” the NCLAT had observed.
On Monday (February 23, 2026), WhatsApp said it would fully comply with the NCLAT directions relating to user consent for sharing data with parent company Meta under its controversial 2021 privacy policy by March 16, 2026. The tribunal had, however, found the CCI’s five-year ban on sharing data for advertisement purposes “redundant”, considering that the user had already been given a choice to opt in or out.
WhatsApp has filed a comprehensive affidavit explaining its technology of end-to-end encryption, following scathing oral remarks from the Bench in the previous hearing on February 3.
The Bench had cautioned that it would not permit the platform and Meta to breach the right to privacy of millions of their “silent consumers” in India through the sharing and commercial exploitation of personal data. It had even compared sharing of private data to a “decent way of committing theft”.
Though WhatsApp and Meta had protested that users could ‘opt out’ of the data-sharing provision, the court had persisted in its criticism.
Senior advocate Madhavi Goradia Divan, for CCI, said there was also a competition law concern attached to the case.
“Data-sharing has many facets. One may be privacy and data protection. But there is another aspect, protecting market and consumer, which stands on a totally different footing,” Ms. Divan submitted.
Published – February 23, 2026 09:10 pm IST
