Supreme Court of India dismissed the petition after TRAI affidavit

Case Details

Case Name: Rajeswari v Union of India

Case No- Writ Petition Civil No. 699 of 2021

Bench: Hon’ble Sanjiv Khanna, J., Hon’ble S.V.N. Bhatti, J.

After filing of the Counter-affidavit by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) stating that the cellular mobile telephone number once deactivated for non-usage or disconnected on the request of subscriber, is not allocated to the new subscriber for at least a period of 90 days, the Supreme Court of India dismissed the petition.

The bench observed that it is for the earlier subscriber to take adequate steps to ensure that privacy is maintained. The subscriber can prevent misuse of WhatsApp data by deleting the WhatsApp account attached with the previous phone number and erasing the WhatsApp data stored on the local device memory/cloud/drive.

Further, as per the information available on the WhatsApp help center, to eliminate enmesh/ confusion in case of re-cycled phone numbers, they monitor account inactivity, and when an account is inactive for 45 days and then the account is activated on a different mobile device, the old account data is removed.

Read the judgment/order here: 13468_2021_3_45_47839_Order_30-Oct-2023_upload