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WhatsApp India Now Has a Grievance Officer, US-Based Komal Lahiri 

WhatsApp on Sunday, 23 September, appointed Komal Lahiri as the Grievance Officer for the country.

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After being pulled up by the Supreme Court for not appointing a Grievance Officer and complying with other laws of India, WhatsApp, on Sunday, 23 September, appointed Komal Lahiri as the Grievance Officer for the country, but who would be working out of WhatsApp’s offices in California.

According to Lahiri’s Linkedin profile, she has been working as Senior Director of Global Customer Operations and Localization at WhatsApp since March this year. Before WhatsApp, she was working at Facebook from 2014 as a Director in their Product Planning and Operations Shared Services, before moving on to Senior Director, Community Operations/Head of Community Support Facebook and Instagram.

Lahiri also spent more than six years at PayPal from 2008-2014. where she served in multiple capacities in Product Management, Global Disputes Policy & Experience, Consumer, Business & Credit Products Risk and finally as Senior Director/Head of Financial Risk Platforms.

Based out of WhatsApp's headquarters in Menlo Park, California, Lahiri can be contacted via email and general post by over 200 million users in the country.

"To contact the Grievance Officer, please send an email with your complaint or concern and sign with an electronic signature. If you're contacting us about a specific account, please include your phone number in full international format, including the country code," said the FAQ under the security and privacy settings.

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If you want to contact WhatsApp, go to Settings, then Help and Contact Us section. “You can contact the Grievance Officer with complaints or concerns, including the following: WhatsApp’s Terms of Service and Questions about your account,” read the information. “If you’re a law enforcement official, please read our information for law enforcement authorities and how you can contact us,” it added.

‘WhatsApp Should be Made Accountable’

The move came after the Supreme Court, on 27 August, issued a notice to the Centre and WhatsApp over a plea that said while companies like Facebook and Google have appointed Grievance Officers for users in India, WhatsApp has not.

“In order to make WhatsApp accountable, it must be directed to comply with Indian laws and appoint a Grievance Officer who shall address grievances of the consumers as well as co-ordinate with investigating agencies,” said the plea.

Every user has a number on WhatsApp but the messaging platform does not have a number through which the users can contact the company for grievance redressal, it added.

Indian IT Mins & WhatsApp CEO

Last month, Union Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY) Minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad, also told WhatsApp CEO Chris Daniels to comply with Indian laws and take "suitable" steps to prevent misuse of the instant messaging platform in the country.

Daniels' meeting with the IT Minister came against the backdrop of several incidents of mob lynching being linked to the circulation of fake messages and misinformation on the instant messaging platform.

Prasad told Daniels to set up a grievance officer in India, establish a corporate entity and comply with the laws of the country. Daniels said he would undertake these initiatives.

As reported by The Hindu, Prasad said the company’s representative was informed that the platform will be liable to be treated as an abettor of rumour propagation in the absence of adequate checks.

“… it does not take rocket science to locate [the origin of] a message being circulated in hundreds and thousands… you [WhatsApp] must have a mechanism to find a solution,” Mr. Prasad had said.

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