Indian government withdraws Personal Data Protection Bill

History:

In 2017, the Indian Supreme Court recognised the right to privacy as a fundamental right within the ambit of the Constitution. The top court had directed the Centre to come up with a data protection framework for the country. The data protection law for India has been in the works since 2018, when a panel led by Justice Srikrishna, a retired judge of the Supreme Court, drew up a draft version of a Bill. The draft was reviewed by the JCP, which submitted its recommendations along with a draft Bill in November 2021.

Why has the Bill been withdrawn?

In a note circulated to Members of Parliament, Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw explained the reason behind the withdrawal of the Bill: “The Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019 was deliberated in great detail by the Joint Committee of Parliament. 81 amendments were proposed and 12 recommendations were made towards a comprehensive legal framework on the digital ecosystem. Considering the report of the JCP, a comprehensive legal framework is being worked upon. Hence, in the circumstances, it is proposed to withdraw ‘The Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019’ and present a new Bill that fits into the comprehensive legal framework.

The Bill was also seen as being too “compliance intensive” by startups of the country, The Indian Express had reported earlier. According to government sources, the revamped Bill will be much easier to comply with, especially for startups.

So what could the revamped Bill look like?

Specific provisions or contours of the upcoming new Bill are not known. But a senior official said that on the question of data localisation, the government is considering whether to add it to the planned new version of the Information Technology Act, and whether to allow cross-border data flows only to “trusted geographies”

When is the revamped Bill expected to be ready?

Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar said the government will table the new legislation in Parliament “very quickly”. “The government has today withdrawn the Personal Data Protection Bill that was formulated in 2018 and re-written by the JCP in 2021,” Chandrasekhar said on Wednesday (August 3). “After considerable deliberation and examination of the JCP’s report, it was found that there is a need for a comprehensive redrawing of laws and rules taking into account some of the JCP’s comments and the emerging challenges and opportunities that arise from there. A comprehensive approach to the laws will be undertaken by the government and we will come back to Parliament very quickly after following the process of consultation,” he said.

According to sources in the IT Ministry, the government is aiming to bring the legislation in Parliament’s Winter Session. A senior official said that the new Bill would incorporate the broader ideas of data protection as recommended by the JCP, and would be in line with the Supreme Court’s landmark privacy judgment of 2017. Given the significant number of amendments suggested by the JCP, it was necessary to comprehensively redraw the contours of the proposed law, the official said.

https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-sci-te...

As a side note: I don't know why AccessNow.org's blog post was upvoted. It's extremely light on details.

The Indian center is very different from the American center. Economically, the Indian center is closer to Bernie-Sanders than it is to Biden. The Indian left (academic and on the ground) is actually communist and the Indian right still tends to be fairly center-left (as far as the US goes) The social left-right dimension is its own thing, and does not map neatly onto similar intuitions in the west.

The last caveat is that Indian secularism is very different from western secularism.

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That being said, This is a good list.

> The Print

I am personally biased towards favoring 'The Print' more so than the other organizations. Shekhar Gupta leads an ideologically clear (socially liberal, economically liberal) media house, always quotes their sources and does well to separate reporting from opinion. I would not call it right leaning by any means.

> Caravan

I have mixed opinions on Caravan. At their best, they are great. But, they can vary between excellent left-leaning journalism to outright left-wing fear mongering. I'm sure you'll see some strong opinions thrown around about them, and both the positive and negative tend to be well deserved.

> Wire and OutlookIndia

I have a low opinion of both. I wouldn't go as far as to call them a rag, but I wouldn't defend them against those accusations either.

> Swarajya - but a strong source to understand BJP and Hinduvta politics from their perspective

Agreed. Won't go there for news, but serves a purpose.

A lot of Western commentators don't tend to realize that aspect of Indian politics, instead applying a federal American lens (though American politics is actually equally diverse as well).

To any Americans reading this thread, Indian politics is HEAVILY local party driven. BJP MPs from states like HP would have entirely different opinions or backgrounds from BJP MPs from a region like Purvanchal (Eastern UP). In additional, most elected officials in Indian politics don't really have party loyalty. They'll change parties at the drop of the hat (or start their own) if they feel their opportunity to climb up the political rungs are best served elsewhere. That is a MASSIVE reason the BJP/NDA+ won like a steamroller in 2019 - a number of up and coming INC politicians changed party affiliations because their upward potential was blocked by regional INC machines.

In addition, it is very common for regional political barons to split off from the national party and make their own regional party - this happened with the INC in West Bengal (Mamata Banerjee and the TMC), Uttar Pradesh (Mulayam Singh Yadav and the Samajwadi Party), Maharashtra (Bal Thackeray and the Shiv Sena - which itself split into 2 parties this week - and Tariq Anwar and the NCP) , and Andhra Pradesh (YSR Raja Reddy and the YSR Congress) to name a few states. Captain Amarinder Singh - the former Chief Minister (Indian equivalent of Governor) of Punjab - himself is rumored to be making a regional party in Punjab now as well after internal politicking in the INC forced him out of CMship.

That said, similar stuff will eventually happen to the BJP as well. I've heard rumblings at the grassroots level in Haryana, HP, and Jammu about discontent with local BJP acolytes and there is probably going to be a major shift in Indian politics over the next 10 years as a new generation of local parties form.

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> The Print

Agree with you that they are not right leaning in any way. I labelled them as slightly center right due to their occasional support for certain pro-market reforms (ones that I do support by the way). Honestly, I probably could have called them centrist but the edit timer has run down on that comment.

> Wire and Outlook

I'm curious about your reasons for having a low opinion of them? I've had reservations about some opinions the Wire reports, but at least in the region my family is from they've been pretty even handed reporting on abuses of power that have occurred. W/ regards to Outlook I was debating whether to add them to this list, but I have read some quality articles from them on occasion.

> but the edit timer has run down on that comment

such is life.

> I'm curious about your reasons for having a low opinion of them?

I think part of it is because I only ever read them when someone tells me about how they mis-reported on something. So, it might be personal bias where I overtly hone-in on the mistakes they make. I don't read either OutlookIndia or TheWire enough to make strong claims about their caliber as journalism houses. But when I get linked to them, I make sure to get a 2nd opinion.