New Data Protection Bill draft will be shared for public consultation soon: Ashwini Vaishnaw

Indian government, earlier this week, withdrew the Personal Data Protection Bill from the Parliament. While moving the motion to withdraw the Bill, Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology, Ashwini Vaishnaw said that ‘a comprehensive legal framework’ was being worked upon on recommendation of the Joint Committee of Parliament (JCP) and that ‘it is proposed to withdraw ‘The Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019′. Shortly after, the Minister said a new Personal Data Protection Bill draft was in the works and that it will soon be shared for public consultation.

In an interview with The Economic Times, Vaishnaw said that a draft of a new Data Protection Bill is almost ready and that the government will release it for public consultation soon. The Minister also said that he remained optimistic that new draft bill will soon get the requisite approvals and that it will be turned into a law by the Budget Session of the Parliament.

Talking about the changes in the existing draft, the IT Minister said that while there will be no changes in the core principles of the draft bill, it will be more accommodating towards the recommendations made by the JCP. He said that the core principle of Right to Privacy, as enshrined by the Supreme Court will remain the same and that the new draft bill look at the matter from a more comprehensive perspective.

Why Personal Data Protection Bill draft was withdrawn from the Parliament?

As far as the reasons as to why the draft bill has been withdrawn are concerned, the minister told the media that Personal Data Protection Bill draft had a total of 99 section, out of which the JCP had recommended amendments to 81 sections. In addition to that, JCP made 12 additional recommendations. To out it simply, there was no way to accommodate those recommendations but to start afresh.

Clarifying the matter further Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar said that some of the recommendations by JCP despite being comprehensive were outside the domain of the law, which in turn was creating a lot of complexities as far as compliance on part of small businesses is concerned.

It was creating degrees of complexity in increasing the burden of compliance on the small businesses and small startups: Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar on withdrawal of Personal Data Protection Bill pic.twitter.com/fCyhehI6M2

— ANI (@ANI) August 4, 2022

And so, the ministry decided to come up with a new and more comprehensive framework. “It was considered more appropriate that we come back with a new comprehensive framework of global standard laws incl Digital Privacy Laws that wouldn’t help catalyse startup innovation ecosystem but also protect fundamental right to privacy of our citizens,” he said.

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