Data Protection Bill by Lok Sabha’s Minister:
On August 3, the long-awaited Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) bill was introduced in Parliament, bringing India one step closer to passing its first piece of law that directly addresses citizen privacy and sets standards for how data about individuals may be used by both private and public bodies.
Ashwini Vaishnaw, the Lok Sabha’s Minister for Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), presented the bill for discussion. Notably, the Personal Data Protection (PDP) measure was withdrawn by the government exactly one year after the bill was introduced.
A Parliamentary Committee may then conduct additional research on the DPDP measure before it is put to a vote, or the measure may be passed by both houses of Parliament and made into law at that point.
Despite the Minister of State for MeitY Rajeev Chandrasekhar’s claim that the bill had not been sent to a committee, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on IT and Communications submitted a report on August 1 approving the DPDP bill.
The proposed DPDP Bill, which was initially published in 2022, has already been approved by the Union Cabinet. The proposal has since through numerous rounds of consultation, and the government has altered the legislation numerous times. The newly approved document has not yet been made available to the public.
