Approval for data protection bill: Parliamentary panel member Karti Chidambaram dismisses IT minister's 'untrue' claim

Karti Chidambaram

Lok Sabha MP and member of the Standing Committee on Communications and IT Karti P Chidambaram on March 2 labelled the claims of IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw that the committee had given approval to the draft data protection bill as 'untrue'.

Earlier in the day, at a NASSCOM event, Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Vaishnaw had said that the committee had "in advance" examined the draft Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Bill before the bill was brought into the Parliament, and that it gave the bill a "big thumbs-up"

In a series of tweets, Chidambaram refuted the claims.

"The IT Minister @AshwiniVaishnaw @GoI_MeitY has said that the Standing Committee on Communications & IT has approved the draft Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2022. As a Member of the Committee, I would like to categorically state that the Bill has not been approved," he said in a tweet.

Chidambaram explained that when the bill was released for public consultation in November 2022, the committee held a preliminary discussion on the draft bill. The larger subject of the December 2022 meeting was citizens' privacy and data security, he said.

"Members raised a number of issues with the draft," the Lok Sabha MP of Sivaganga constituency said.

"Parliamentary procedure mandates that a Bill after introduction in the House, the Speaker/Chairman may recommend the Bill for examination to the Committee. The DPDP Bill has not been formally sent to the Committee & hence a “big thumbs up” claimed by @AshwiniVaishnaw is untrue," he added.

In 2022, the government published the draft DPDP Bill after it withdrew the PDP Bill 2019. The revised bill focuses only on personal data, thereby doing away with regulating the use of non-personal data.

The draft bill requires a data fiduciary -- ie an entity that processes user data -- to give notice to users on data sought to be collected in clear and plain language. It also mandates that the user should be allowed the right to give, manage, and withdraw consent from sharing information.

Apart from this, the bill states that the data fiduciary shall not undertake tracking or behavioural monitoring of children or advertising directed at children. It mandates penalties of up to Rs 500 crore for non-compliance.