Ashwini Vaishnaw tables Data Protection Bill, 2023 in Lok Sabha

Minister for Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) Ashwini Vaishnaw introduced the Data Protection Bill, 2023 in Lok Sabha on Thursday. This comes after a year-long consultations and review of the drafts.

This bill, when passed, will be the first legislation in the country addressing the digital privacy of the citizens. The bill also aims to establish the guidelines for using the data of the citizens by private entities and the government.

The bill is likely to give the government the power to block digital platforms after more than two instances of penalties for data breaches. Every digital platform may need to take consent from users before collecting any digital personal data, along with an itemised notice for the same. For collecting children’s data, consent from parents or legal guardians will be needed, except for a category of platforms to be defined later on.

The work on the data protection bill started after the Supreme Court ruled that Right to Privacy is a fundamental right.

The government had in August last year withdrawn the Personal Data Protection Bill, which was first presented in late 2019, and issued a new version of the draft bill in November 2022.

The draft bill had earned criticism around the government getting power to exempt entities from various clauses of the bill.