The Personal Data Protection Bill was surprisingly withdrawn from the Lok Sabha by the Centre. The Center announced that it would introduce "a series of new legislation." compatible with the comprehensive legal framework.
"The government will introduce new laws to create a thorough legal framework for the digital economy," Ashwini Vaishnaw, the IT minister, submitted the House motion to withdraw the Bill, according to PTI.
On December 11, 2019, the Minister of Electronics and Information Technology tabled the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019 in Lok Sabha.
Commonly known as the "Privacy Bill," it was designed to safeguard individual rights by limiting the gathering, transferring, and processing of personal data that can be used to identify a specific person.
An expert group led by Justice BN Srikrishna first drafted the Bill in 2018. The central government presented a draft of the Bill in the Lok Sabha in 2019; it was then referred to the Joint Committee of Parliament (JCP) in December 2021 and later presented to Parliament after a number of extensions.
Many contended that since the encryption keys may still be out of reach of government entities, the actual location of the data is irrelevant in the cyber world.
According to some experts, the terms "national security" or "reasonable purposes" are ambiguous and subjective, which could result in the state meddling in citizens' personal affairs.
Technology giants like Google and Facebook opposed it and criticized the protectionist policy of data localization because they feared it would spread to other nations as well.
Social media corporations, industry professionals, and even ministers had rejected it, suggesting that it had too many shortcomings to be efficient and advantageous for both customers and businesses.
Additionally, it can backfire on established firms who process foreign data in India as well as on emerging businesses in India that are striving to go worldwide.
The 2019 Bill underwent a comprehensive analysis by the Joint Committee of Parliament. 12 proposals and 81 amendments were put out in an effort to create a comprehensive legal framework for the digital economy. A thorough legislative framework is being developed taking the JCP's report into consideration.
Hence, it is proposed to withdraw.
The nation's startups have criticized the Bill for being too "compliance-intensive." The revised law will be much simpler to follow, especially for entrepreneurs.
The proposed Data Localization clause in the Bill was contested by the tech industry. Data localization would have made it essential for businesses to keep a copy of specific sensitive personal data in India, and it would have prevented the export of undefined "important" personal data.
The central government and its agencies would be given broad exemptions from all of Bill's requirements, according to the critics, who said that this would allow for misuse of power.
The Srikrishna panel's finalized draft was subject to 81 proposed amendments, and 12 recommendations were also included. One of these proposals was to broaden the proposed law's purview to include discussions of non-personal data, shifting Bill's focus from protecting individual privacy to more comprehensive data protection.
Non-personal data is any collection of data that does not include any personally identifying information.
Additionally, the JCP report made recommendations for changes to social media company regulation and the use of only "trusted hardware" in cellphones, among other things.
It was recommended that social media platforms that do not serve as middlemen should be regarded as content publishers and held accountable for the material they host.
For more on news and current affairs from around the world please visit Indiatimes News.