Meta under govt scanner after WhatsApp outage in India, asked to submit report on blackout

WhatsApp is now under the government scanner after Tuesday’s outage that lasted for almost two hours. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has asked Meta to submit a report on the cause of the outage. The American company has been asked to explain the reason behind the outage. 

Meta will have to submit the report to ICERT, the nodal cybersecurity agency of the government. Meity sources told Business Today TV that it is procedural for MeitY to take action when there is any disruption to the internet in India's geographical domain. The sources claimed that Meta has been asked to submit a report as to why WhatsApp faced a blackout in India on Tuesday. 

The WhatsApp outage began around noon on Tuesday and it lasted for a good two hours. The outage had an far-reaching impact in the country. Users were not able to send or receive texts. Even WhatsApp video calls and voice calls were down. The Status feature, along with other crucial services such as WhatsApp Business and WhatsApp Pay failed to operate during these two hours. 

After the services were restored, Meta did not provide any substantial details about the outage. The tech brand informed that the downtime happened due to a technical error on their end. In a statement, they told Business Today, "The brief outage was a result of a technical error on our part and has now been resolved."