New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday sought response from central government and Whatsapp over payments service run by the messaging platform.
A plea filed in the apex court said that WhatsApp has failed to appoint a Grievance Officer as per IT rules, following which the bench issued a notice to the government and the Facebook-owned messaging service.
The court has sought a detailed reply from IT and Finance ministry within four weeks as to why a grievance officer in India has not been appointed yet by Whatsapp.
The order comes days after IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad met WhatsApp Head Chris Daniels and requested him to set up a local corporate entity and find a technology solution to trace the origin of fake messages circulated through its platform as well as appoint a grievance officer.
An NGO, Centre for Accountability and Systemic Change, had said that WhatsApp does not comply with provision of mandating Grievance Officer and other laws of India.
To open a bank account, a customer needs to comply with KYC norms laid down by the Reserve Bank of India or RBI and various other formalities, an earlier plea stated.
"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. Yet, it is being allowed to continue with its Payments and other services, without any checks," it said.
The petition also said the social media giant does not comply with tax and other laws of India but its reach is such that it is used by everyone, be it a commoner or the judges of the top court.
"Companies like Facebook Inc. and Google Inc. have appointed Grievance Officer for users in India, but WhatsApp has not. However, the Grievance Officer of Facebook sits in Ireland, and the Grievance Officer of Google sits in USA and are thus rendered ineffective. In order to make Respondent No. 6 (WhatsApp) accountable, it must be directed to comply with Indian Law and appoint Grievance Officer, who shall be the person to address grievance of consumers, as well as co-ordinate with investigating agencies," the petition stated.
WhatsApp has over 200 million users in India. Almost one million people are "testing" WhatsApp's payments service in India, which is the largest base for the Facebook-owned company that has over 1.5 billion users globally.
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