Lok Sabha Passes Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2023 Amid Opposition

Lok Sabha on August 7 passed the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill 2023 with a voice vote. The bill lays down the obligations of private and government entities handling and processing data, as well as the rights of individuals.

Ashwini Vaishnaw, the Minister of Electronics and Information Technology, presented the bill in the lower house. It will now move to the Rajya Sabha, where the ruling coalition is short of the majority mark.

The opposition has raised several concerns over the legislation, such as public welfare and the protection of people's personal data. They demanded that the bill be sent to a parliamentary panel for further deliberations.

On August 3, Vaishnaw moved the bill in the Lok Sabha amid protests from the opposition, which alleged that the bill violated citizen’s Right to Privacy. The norms will apply to personal data collected within India from data principals online, and to personal data collected offline, but subsequently digitised.

Following the Supreme Court's judgement on right to privacy in 2017, a need for the data protection bill had emerged. A committee was also set up under the leadership of retired SC justice BN Srikrishna. The committee had submitted its report in 2018 following which the government drafted the bill. The first version of the bill was presented in the parliament in 2019. Following concerns expressed by various stakeholders, a joint parliamentary committee (JPC) was constitued in 2019. The JPC discussed the bill and submitted a detailed report on the provisions of the proposed legislation. The government formally withdrew the old version of the bill in 2019 and started working on an updated version of the data protection bill, which was passed by the Lok Sabha on August 7.