Govt clarifies that data protection bill will be introduced as regular bill: Report

After claims that the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill may be introduced as a financial bill, government sources clarified that it will be introduced as a regular bill, CNBCTV 18 reported.

The DPDP Bill will be introduced by Minister for Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) Ashwini Vaishnaw in the Lok Sabha for consideration. It is worth noting that the bill was tabled exactly one year after the government withdrew the Personal Data Protection (PDP) bill.

Earlier, Lok Sabha MP Manish Tewari on August 3 said that the bill may be introduced as a financial bill.

Congress MP Tewari, who was also a member of the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) that studied that Personal Data Protection (PDP) Bill, shared a circular which said the President (Draupadi Murmu), has recommended the  introduction of the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Bill, under Article 117(1) of the Constitution and consideration under Article 117 (3). Article 117 deals with with provisions of financial bills.

Moneycontrol was not independently able to verify the circular in Tewari's tweet.

Tewari said, "How Did the Digital Data Protection Bill get classified as a Financial Bill suddenly? If this bill on passage is certified as a money bill by @loksabhaspeaker @ombirlakota which seems to be the intent of getting it classed as a Financial Bill then Rajya Sabha can not vote on it.

"It can only recommend non binding changes to Lok Sabha.  The latest iteration of this Bill mocks the efforts put in by the Joint Committee of Parliament on the Data Protection Bill led by two @BJP4India members @ppchaudharybjp & @M_Lekhi respectively," Tewari said adding that the bill needs to be considered as a regular bill, and again referred to a JPC.

Earier, the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and other Subsidies, benefits and services) Act, 2016 was introduced as a money bill in the Parliament. The issue was brought up in the Aadhaar litigation in the Supreme Court. However, a judgement in that case is still pending.

"What is the basis for this? As if ignoring years of concerns wasn’t bad enough, we are now potentially facing the possibility of schadenfreude to pass a deficient bill," Prateek Waghre, policy director at Internet Freedom Foundation asked.