Data law will be passed and implemented ‘much before’ 2024 general elections

Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar.

India is on the cusp of releasing the draft of the new Data Protection Bill for consultations with stakeholders. Union Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology and Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, told Moneycontrol in an exclusive conversation that “what we are building today is an overall framework which ranges from digital data protection Bill to national data governance framework to a new legislation to supersede the IT Act. The way the Modi government approaches legislations is that it is done through extensive consultations.”

On the purview of the Data Protection Bill, Chandrasekhar said, “Government will also come under the purview of data protection of legislation. There is no such thing (as the) govt being exempt – but even fundamental rights have restrictions. Fundamental rights to privacy have reasonable restrictions; even the SC has laid out the necessity of these principles. Even privacy is not an absolute right, but a fundamental right, just as speech is – there are restrictions required for security, law and order...In specific instances, the government will have the ability to be exempt, especially in law and order, criminality, child abuse, etc.”

On the issue of criminal and financial penalties, the minister cited an instance where citing a New York Times news report on Google’s $391.5-million privacy settlement in the US for allegedly misleading users into believing that they had turned off location tracking, he had tweeted, “India’s #DigitalDataProtectionBill will put a stop to this and ensure that any platform or intermediary that does this will face punitive and financial consequences.”

Elaborating on that, he told Moneycontrol, “We should have safeguards and agreement that data of a consumer should not be misused. This can be established when people understand that misuse has financial penalties and consequences, rather than threatening them with criminal cases, and so on.”

The minister has iterated that while the basic principles of the old data Bill remain the same, the new Bill will not be as unwieldy and compliance-intensive. Consumer remains at the centre of the new data Bill – use of data will have to be consented by the citizen, he pointed out.

Watch the full interview here.