New Delhi, Jan 16 (Agencies) : The Supreme Court on Monday issued notices to Centre, Facebook, WhatsApp and TRAI on a plea that sought government regulation of the online messaging services. The issue raised in the petition concern the new privacy policy of WhatsApp under which the app can share data with the parent organisation Facebook. This, petition alleges, may amount to invasion of privacy of individuals.

Delhi HC had earlier denied any relief and refuse to interfere with the policy of Facebook and WhatsApp. Replies to the notices issued on Monday have to be filed in two weeks, after which further hearing will take place.

Several months ago WhatsApp had announced that it would soon start sharing some user data with Facebook. This led to a lot of pushback from privacy watchdogs and consumers. It's not only in India that WhatsApp and Facebook are under watch over the new privacy policy. Even the Europe Facebook has faced difficulties in pushing through the new policy.

Last month the European Commission had said that Facebook was misleading it about WhatsApp. " Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, in charge of competition policy, had said: "Companies are obliged to give the Commission accurate information during merger investigations... In this specific case, the Commission's preliminary view is that Facebook gave us incorrect or misleading information during the investigation into its acquisition of WhatsApp. Facebook now has the opportunity to respond."

Recently, with the objections from privacy watchdogs increasing in Europe, Facebook had said that it was temporarily suspending the data sharing between two of its primary apps -- Facebook and WhatsApp. The company had earlier suspended such data collection in the UK.