Digital India Act's draft to be open for discussion by June 7: IT Minister

The government aims to achieve the goal of a digital economy to cross $1 trillion by 2025-26

The first draft of the upcoming Digital India Act (DIA) will be up for consultation by June 7, reported Moneycontrol quoting Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) Rajeev Chandrasekhar.

“The DIA bill will be released in the first week of June and consultation on the draft will start on June 7,” Chandrasekhar said.

Amid the growing threat of AI-related misinformation, the bill is aimed to deal with misinformation and 'high-risk AI' to prevent user harm.

The DIA is expected to replace the Information Technology Act of 2000, taking into consideration the need to regulate and safeguard users in the expanding internet economy in India.

The first pre-drafting consultation took place in Bengaluru in March. Whereas, another consultation is expected in Delhi soon, ahead of the release of the draft bill in June.

According to the Government of India, it aims to achieve the goal of the digital economy to cross $1 trillion by 2025-26.

The government is also considering the rules and regulations being made globally to balance the growing digital economy to protect users and avoid monopolies by tech giants.

"All the regulators in the world want to regulate through the prism of user harm. Countries of the world must harmonise and cooperate because victims are in one jurisdiction and the perpetrators are in some other jurisdiction," said Chandrasekhar during his address.

He added, "The DIA will be increasingly harmonized with other global rules and regulations on this."

Talking about the European Union's imposition of a record fine of 1.2 billion euros ($1.3 billion) on Meta on May 22, for violating Global Data Protection Regulations on cross-border data transfers, Chandrasekhar highlighted that the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2022 has similar measures.

“That is in the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill. You will see when the Parliament passes it. We have the same kind of punitive measures there as well. The Digital Data Protection Bill is going to the Parliament in July,” he told Moneycontrol.