India's National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) has provided partial relief to Meta Platforms by setting aside a key directive from the Competition Commission of India (CCI) that had prohibited WhatsApp from sharing user data with other Meta companies for advertising purposes. The tribunal overturned the CCI's finding that Meta had leveraged its dominant position in messaging to unfairly benefit its advertising business. While the lifting of the data-sharing ban is a significant win for the company's strategy in the region, the NCLAT upheld the financial penalty of ₹213.14 crore (approximately $25.5 million) imposed by the CCI in November 2024. The tribunal agreed that WhatsApp's 2021 privacy policy update constituted an abuse of its dominant position by imposing "take-it-or-leave-it" terms on users. This ruling is a pivotal moment in the ongoing debate over data privacy and the market power of large tech companies in India.