Complicated data protection bill would have hurt startups: Rajeev Chandrasekhar

Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar.

One of the major reasons for withdrawing the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019, was that it would have made compliance hard for startups, Minister of State for Electronics and Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar said on August 3.

"Big tech firms would have just hired more lawyers to comply if there was a complicated privacy law. The burden of such a legislation would have hurt startups," he added.

Chandrasekhar reiterated that withdrawal of the bill today doesn't change anything about data privacy in India.

"I have always emphasised that data privacy is anyway a fundamental right of all citizens, according to the Supreme Court's ruling. What the data protection law does is it just specifies do's and don'ts for those who collect the data," the minister said in a press briefing.

According to a person in the know, a comprehensive set of laws and rules will be enacted to deal with data protection and related subjects.

Other policies under this umbrella would include personal data protection, cybersecurity law, data management and safety, a national data governance framework policy and other things.

"The JPC had given many suggestions regarding things such as significant social media intermediaries, trusted hardware (such as electronics imports), data localisation which would be difficult to bring under one law," said the source aware of the developments.

Chandrasekhar said that the current Bill that was withdrawn was designed in 2018 for the limited purpose of privacy. The Bill had been introduced after the Right to Privacy was recognised as a fundamental right by the Supreme Court in 2017.

He added that after examining the Joint Parliamentary Committee’s report, “it was found that there is a need for a comprehensive redrawing of the laws and rules, taking into account some of the JPC's comments and the contemporary challenges and future opportunities that arise here.”

The Bill was first brought in 2018 and introduced in the Lok Sabha in 2019,  and referred to the Joint Parliamentary Committee. The updated version of the Bill also included non-personal data under its ambit, which was panned.

“In its current form, it provides large exemptions to government departments, prioritises the interests of big corporations, and does not adequately respect your fundamental right to privacy,” the Internet Freedom Foundation had earlier said.

The updated version of the Bill was criticised for giving the government a free hand and not protecting privacy, and it conflated issues by bringing in both non-personal data and social media under its ambit.