As the controversy between social media giants and the Indian government sees twists and turns and Twitter is at the center of it all, WhatsApp is now likely going to be the center of attention. As a move to comply with India's new IT rules, which came into effect last month, WhatsApp appointed its grievance officer for India.
As per the government, any social media company with over 50 lakh users, must appoint a grievance officer, nodal officer and a chief compliance officer. And, this personnel are required to be resident in India. WhatsApp's appointment of Paresh B Lal through a post box in Banjara Hills in Hyderabad, Telangana did not raise any red flags, but entrackr dug deeper to discover discrepancies in the Facebook-owned app's compliance.
According to the report, WhatsApp's grievance officer is not an employee of the company, which doesn't fully comply with the new IT rules under the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology. As per the official guidelines, Chief Compliance Officer, nodal contact person and Resident Grievance Officer must be "employee of a significant social media intermediary, who is resident in India."
In that context, WhatsApp's grievance officer Paresh B. Lal is a senior associate at AZB & Partners, which entrackr says is the law firm that has WhatsApp as one of its clients. There's no clarity on whether this is an interim appointment, but appointing an external grievance officer suggests WhatsApp isn't fully compliant with the new IT rules.
Why it can be a problem for WhatsApp?
Ever since the new IT rules came into effect, social media giants have been in a panic. WhatsApp could end up in the IT ministry's scanner for its non-compliance as Twitter was sent a notice for appointing its interim grievance officer Dharmendra Chatur. As it turned out, Chatur wasn't an employee of the company, but a lawyer with an external law firm.
