70% respondents want data protection bill to drop localisation rule: Survey

Proposed government legislation on data protection must exclude non-personal data and allow cross-border transfers, a majority of respondents told a private company’s survey.

The government early in August withdrew the Personal Data Protection (PDP) Bill, 2019, after four years of deliberations. The government said it would bring a new Bill with a "comprehensive framework" and "contemporary digital privacy laws ".

The draft PDP Bill included provisions on non-personal data while mandating intermediary platforms to store at least one serving copy of personal data on a server in the Indian Territory. A survey by data privacy solutions provider Tsaaro said on Monday 55 per cent of respondents want cross-border transfers without government approval. As many as 73 per cent of respondents