Supreme Court on Wednesday directed WhatsApp to publicize its assurance to the Government that it will not limit its functioning for Indian users who do not agree to its amended privacy settings until the government enacts a data protection law.

In an interim order, a five-judge Constitution bench directed the messaging platform to do so twice by full-page advertising in five national daily. The advertisements will indicate what the app stated in its commitment to the Centre in a letter dated May 22, 2021.

The agreement between WhatsApp and Facebook to share calls, pictures, texts, videos, and documents was challenged in court when Facebook acquired WhatsApp. The petitioners claimed that doing so would violate their right to privacy and freedom of speech.

The court's panel, which was led by Justice K M Joseph and also included Justices Ajay Rastogi, Aniruddha Bose, Hrishikesh Roy, and C T Ravikumar, took note of the letter's position as well as senior attorney Kapil Sibal's assertion that WhatsApp would uphold the letter's terms until the next hearing date.

Attorney General R. Venkataramani questioned if it would be appropriate to hold off until Parliament decides on data protection at the hearing on Wednesday. Although this was asserted even earlier, the bench claimed little had changed.

According to Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, the Bill may be submitted in the second half of the current Budget session, pending Cabinet clearance.

Sibal emphasized that the Bill may proceed to consultative committees after being introduced, adding another two to three months to the process. According to him, this would imply that the law would be in effect by July.

The bench ultimately decided to postpone the hearing despite initially seeming inclined to do so given the argument that the Bill might be tabled shortly and that the arguments in the case would likely take some time.