Industry specialists divided over Govt resolution to withdraw Personal Data Protection Bill

Industry specialists are divided over the federal government’s resolution to withdraw the Personal Data Protection (PDP) Bill, 2019, and exchange it with a brand new ‘comprehensive legal framework’ and ‘contemporary digital privacy laws’ for regulating on-line house.

The invoice was revoked after practically 4 years of it being within the works, the place it went by means of a number of adjustments together with a overview by a Joint Parliamentary Committee and confronted pushback from a variety of stakeholders together with tech corporations and privateness activists.

“The withdrawal of the PDP bill is personally disappointing to me, especially since the industry has already been waiting for four years for this draft to be taken forward,” Dr Rishi Bhatnagar, Chairman, IET Future Tech Panel informed indianexpress.com.

According to specialists, the proposed Bill burdened on the localisation of information and lacked a bifurcation to accommodate private and non-personal datasets individually. “There were parts of the proposal that included obtaining of citizen-consent for the usage of personal data and special exemptions to probing agencies from the Act. These aspects of the Bill seem to be collectively responsible for triggering the withdrawal of it,” mentioned Bhatnagar.

However, for Kazim Rizvi, Founding Director, The Dialogue, a New Delhi-based assume tank, the withdrawal of the “Data Protection Bill 2021 is the right move as it had various shortcomings and concerns, notably around the lack of independence of the Data Protection Authority (DPA), restrictions on cross-border data flow, the inclusion of non-personal data and broad exemptions to the executive for data processing.”

The Bill had been broadly criticised for being biased towards the info assortment entity. For occasion, if any consumer desires to withdraw their consent from sharing their knowledge, it’s attainable however the consumer must give “a valid reason” or bear the authorized consequence for such withdrawal. Moreover, what constitutes a “valid reason” can also be subjective.

Another main disadvantage of the Bill was a proposed provision referred to as knowledge localisation, beneath which it will have been obligatory for corporations to retailer a replica of sure delicate private knowledge inside India, and the export of undefined “critical” private knowledge from the nation could be prohibited.

Experts hope {that a} new privateness regulation will probably be enacted by subsequent yr.  “The new bill must balance state interest, business interest, and individuals’ privacy concerns on the same keel,” notes Rizvi.

Meanwhile, Bhatnagar believes that the brand new Bill can solely stand out if the framework comprises laws which are at par with international requirements. “The re-framing of the Bill can also be enhanced by the inputs of IT thought leaders and experts, where ground realities and existing problems in the IT ecosystem can be touched upon with clarity,” he provides.