Meta-owned messaging platform WhatsApp on Wednesday said it banned more than 2.9 million accounts in India in the month of January, which is much lower in comparison to the 3.6 million accounts that it blocked in the previous month of December, 2022.

Between January 1 and January 31, “2,918,000 WhatsApp accounts were banned. 1,038,000 of these accounts were proactively banned, before any reports from users,” the company said in its monthly compliance report.

The messaging platform, which has nearly 500 million users in India, said it received around 1,461 grievance reports in January and “actioned” 195 of those complaints.

WhatsApp published these numbers as part of new guidelines under the IT Rules 2021 that mandates digital and social media platforms with more than 5 million users to publish monthly compliance reports.

“This report contains details of the user complaints received and the corresponding action taken by WhatsApp, as well as WhatsApp’s own preventive actions to combat abuse on our platform,” a WhatsApp Spokesperson said.

WhatsApp’s user safety report comes at a time when the Minister of State for Electronics and IT, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, on Tuesday launched the Grievance Appellate Committee (GAC) that will look into their concerns regarding content and other issues.

The three committees will look into appeals by users against decisions of social media platforms. The IT Ministry last month notified to establish three Grievance Appellate Committees (GACs) as required under the recently amended IT Rules, 2021.

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