Government withdrew the Personal Data Protection Bill, a controversial data protection and privacy bill which was first propose in 2019 and had alarm big technology companies such as Facebook and Google, announcing it was working on a new comprehensive law.
The 2019 bill had propose stringent regulations on cross-border data flows and propose giving the government powers to seek user data from companies, seen as part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s stricter regulation of tech giants.
Government notice said the decision came as a parliamentary panel’s review of the 2019 bill suggest many amendments, leading to the need for a new “comprehensive legal framework”.
The government will now “present a new bill,” the notice added.
Tdy @GoI_MeitY withdrew the Personal Data Protection Bill,2021 from Parliament
— Rajeev Chandrasekhar 🇮🇳 (@Rajeev_GoI) August 3, 2022
This will soon be replaced by a comprehensive framewrk of Global std laws includng Digital Privacy laws for contemporary & future chllnges n catalyze PM @narendramodi ji vision of #IndiaTechade pic.twitter.com/4qfjmKnfPM
Minister of State for IT minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar said on Twitter the new plan framework will adhere to global standards, adding that privacy was a fundamental right of Indian citizens, and that the economy require such cyber laws.
The 2019 privacy bill was design to protect citizens and establish a so-called data protection authority, but it had raise concerns among Tech giants that it could increase their compliance burden and data storage requirements.
Prasanto Roy, a New Delhi-based consultant who closely tracks India’s technology policy Said :
“It is good that there will be a redraft from scratch,”.
“However, India still has no privacy law in sight. That’s leaving data regulation open to a wide variety of sectoral regulations, something a common privacy law could have harmonised.”
Government says such regulations are need to safeguard the data and privacy of citizens. Lawmakers have said that concerns about misuse of sensitive personal data have risen exponentially in India.
Companies including Facebook, Twitter and Google have for years concern with many other separate regulations the government has propose for the technology sector, often straining relations between New Delhi and Washington.
After the privacy law plan of 2019, the government also float new proposals to regulate “non-personal data”, a term for data view as a critical resource by companies that analyse it to build their businesses.
The parliamentary panel had said such non-personal data should be include in the purview of the privacy bill.
The bill also exempt government agencies from the law “in the interest of sovereignty of India”, a provision privacy advocates at the time said would allow agencies to abuse access.
Apar Gupta, the executive director at advocacy Internet Freedom Foundation :
“There were multiple, large concerns earlier. One has to wait and watch whether the new bill is any better,”.
