Data Protection Bill will penalise platforms for data misuse: Rajeev Chandrasekhar

Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar.

Platforms and intermediaries that misuse customer data will face punitive and financial penalties under India's upcoming data protection bill, said Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).

The minister made the remarks in response to reports that Google had agreed to pay $392 million in penalties for tracking the location of users who had logged out of Google apps.

In a tweet, Chandrasekhar said, "This type of "misuse" of custmr data violates #Privacy n #DataProtection expectations. India's #DigitalDataProtection bill put a stop this - & ensure that any Platform/Intermediary that does this will face punitive and financial consequences. [sic]"

The Indian government withdrew the Personal Data Protection Bill 2019, which had been under consideration for years, in August.

Previously, Chandrasekhar had justified the bill's withdrawal by claiming that it would make compliance difficult for startups.

Many provisions of the bill, such as data localisation, hardware authenticity clauses, etc., went beyond data protection and into the realm of privacy, according to sources.

Now, the government intends to enact a comprehensive set of laws dealing with data protection and related issues.

Ashwini Vaishnaw, Union minister for information technology, had previously said that the bill's draft would soon be released for consultation and that the government intended to introduce it in the Parliament by the budget session.

Among the policies that would fall under this umbrella are personal data protection, cybersecurity law, data management and safety, and a national data governance framework policy.