Govt to pass Personal Data Protection Bill to Joint Select Committee of both Houses

Amid protest by the Opposition over the Personal Data Protection Bill, the government on Wednesday, December 11 has proposed sending of the Bill to a joint select committee of Raj Sabha and Lok Sabha. The Bill which deals with the privacy and security of data of Indian citizens was tabled in the Lok Sabha, where Communications, Electronics, and Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad put forward the proposal of sending the bill to the select committee for review. 

The Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019 was introduced following a division with Opposition members opposing its introduction and saying it should be sent to a standing committee. 

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Shashi Tharoor of the Congress, who heads the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information and Technology, protested the move and said it should be referred to his panel. To which the Communication Minister asserted that it is very important legislation and the government is keen that a committee of parliament examines it. 

Prasad said the joint panel will have the sole agenda of going through the bill as the parliamentary standing committee has other bills to scrutinise too.

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The opposition emphasised that this Bill would compromise the rights of citizens. The Minister said that the Bill provides a classification of data, i.e the data is classified into three categories: personal, sensitive personal, and critical personal. Critical data cannot go out of the country, while sensitive data can go out with the consent of the individual and the permission of the authorities.

"The Bill protects data, the privacy of individuals, and data cannot be taken without consent," he said. He explained that the bill had been drafted after extensive consultations and the government had constituted a committee of experts on data protection, chaired by retired Justice BN Srikrishna. The Srikrishna Committee had brought out a draft Personal Data Protection Bill (PDPB).

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The framework had sought to put in place a culture of privacy by design and promote concepts such as consent framework, purpose limitation, storage limitation, and data minimisation among various other privacy-oriented concepts. The Ministry held wide consultations on the recommendations of the committee to finalise the draft legislation. It had also sought feedback from people on the draft of the Bill last year. 

While the Bill is technically intended to protect the personal data of individuals, it allows room for several exemptions to crackdown on unlawful activities.

The draft Bill presented to members of Parliament a day prior clearly said that data may be processed without obtaining consent from the concerned user if it is necessary for the public interest.

The Bill also asks large social media platforms to offer a mechanism for users to prove their identities and display a verification sign publicly, a move that would raise a host of technical issues for companies including Facebook, WhatsApp, and Twitter etc.

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(With inputs from ANI)