February 2026

SC questions WhatsApp, Meta on personal data

Context: The Supreme Court said it would not permit instant messaging platform WhatsApp and its parent company, Meta, to breach the right to privacy of millions of their “silent consumers” in India through the sharing and commercial exploitation of personal data.

• A three-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, addressing Meta and WhatsApp, compared the sharing of private data to a “decent way of committing theft”, saying by now “you must have taken away millions of bytes of data”. WhatsApp and Meta, led by senior advocates Mukul Rohatgi and Amit Sibal, objected to the court’s observations, saying users could ‘opt out’ of data sharing and that prior consent was cardinal. WhatsApp stressed that messages on its platform were end-to-end encrypted.
• Chief Justice Kant asked the online entities whether a poor street vendor or a person living in rural areas would be able to navigate the complicated and “cleverly-crafted” language of consent and be able to take an informed decision.

Value of shared data

• Justice Joymalya Bagchi, who, along with Justice Vipul M. Pancholi, formed part of the Bench, said every silo of data relating to an individual — whether private or not — had value.
• He pointed out that the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act of 2023, India’s first legal framework for digital personal data privacy, covered only the factor of privacy. There seemed to be nothing in the law on the sharing of the data value of a consumer.
• “The DPDP Act only addresses privacy. We would like to examine the rent-sharing of data. Behavioural trends and tendencies can be utilised and monetised. Your (WhatsApp’s) parent company can leverage it for online advertising…,” Justice Bagchi observed.
• The Chief Justice gave an example of a person communicating online with his doctor about medicines, only to get advertisements or notifications about medical services minutes later.
• Solicitor-General Tushar Mehta present in the courtroom, said “our private data is not only sold, but it is commercially exploited. We are not only consumers, but also products”.
• The Bench impleaded the Centre, through the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, as a party in the case. Justice Bagchi said the Centre has to compare the DPDP Act and the European Union’s (EU) strict online governance rules under the Digital Services Act. “The EU rules consider not only privacy but also value. I may have personal data of variously graded privacy. Privacy is lost as soon as I share certain data. Is it an acceptable jurisprudential idea that once data is shared, there is no value for that data any more?” Justice Bagchi asked.
• The court was hearing petitions filed by Meta and WhatsApp against a National Company Law Appellate Tribunal decision last year that upheld a ₹213.14-crore penalty imposed by the Competition Commission of India (CCI).
• Posting the case for interim directions on February 9, the Chief Justice said, “You cannot take advantage of these millions of silent consumers who have no voice”.

Pennaiyar river dispute: SC directs Centre to form tribunal

Context: The Supreme Court directed the Centre to constitute a tribunal to adjudicate the dispute between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka over the sharing of Pennaiyar river water.

• A Bench, headed by Justice Vikram Nath, directed the Centre to issue a notification to constitute the inter-State water disputes tribunal within a month. “The Centre may place the complaint filed by Tamil Nadu before the tribunal upon its constitution,” the Bench said. This direction of the court comes under Section 5 of the Inter-State River Water Disputes Act of 1956.
• In 2018, Tamil Nadu moved the Supreme Court against Karnataka over its work on dams and diversions structures on the river. Karnataka had no right to utilise the waters of Pennaiyar to the detriment of the people of Tamil Nadu, the State had told the court. Tamil Nadu argued that the flowing of water of an inter-State river was a national asset and no single State could claim exclusive ownership of its water. An 1892 agreement over the river water was “valid and binding” on the party States, it had contended.
• Tamil Nadu had wanted a prohibition on Karnataka from initiating any new schemes in the Pennaiyar basin until a tribunal was constituted by the Centre.