Indian IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has that WhatsApp and its parent company Meta have not informed the central government of any plans to shut down its services in India.
"Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has shared that WhatsApp or Meta has not informed the government about any such plans," Vaishnaw had said last week replying to a question raised in the Rajya Sabha.
Congress member Vivek Tankha had asked if WhatsApp was planning to shut its services in India due to the government's directives to share user details under the government directions under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000.
Earlier this year, WhatsApp had informed the Delhi High Court that it will stop its services in India if it is forced by the government to break encryption of messages.
WhatsApp had also challenged the newly formed IT Rules saying that they violated the right to privacy and were unconstitutional.
WhatsApp had told the court that its end-to-end encryption protects user privacy by ensuring only the sender and recipient can access message content.
"As a platform, we are saying, if we are told to break encryption, then WhatsApp goes," Tejas Karia, appearing for WhatsApp, had told a division bench.
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