New Delhi: The draft Digital Personal Data Protection Bill will bring deep behavioural changes “for the better” in all platforms that deal with Indian citizens and their data, Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar has said and expressed hope that the draft legislation will be passed by Parliament at the earliest.
The comment assumes significance as the Union Cabinet Wednesday approved the draft of Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Bill 2023 which would now be tabled in the upcoming monsoon session of Parliament.
According to sources, the bill proposes to levy a penalty of up to Rs 250 crore on entities for every instance of violation of norms in the bill.
Overall, the bill aims to safeguard citizen data and lays down a framework for easy cross-border data flows in trusted corridors.
Chandrasekhar, who is Minister of State for IT and Electronics, declined to talk about the specifics of the draft Bill citing the Parliamentary process, but said it is expected to drive “deep behavioural changes” for all platforms.
The minister also did not specify timelines citing Parliamentary procedure but expressed hope that the bill will be passed by Parliament at the earliest.
“As the bill goes through Parliament we will certainly discuss it more…But the bill is going to protect citizens, cast obligations on all those who deal with citizens data including Government and it is going to create very well defined exceptional circumstances under which Government or law enforcement authorities can access personal data,” he told PTI.
“It is a bill that, in a sense, manages to deal with and harmonise three seemingly contradictory issues,” he said.
The bill, he said, will certainly create deep behavioural changes “for the better” in all the platforms big or small that deal with individual Indian citizens and their data, he said.
The minister assured that businesses can breathe easy about every bit of policy-making that government undertakes.
He emphasised that the government is focused on ensuring that things are not difficult or compliance-intensive as long as platforms follow the law.
“We are creating and encouraging concept of trusted corridors. That means, if India and the US have relationship of trust and the laws that India has for data protection are in a sense projectable and enforceable for US entities that manage Indian data, that should be possible,” he said.
The government is creating an “easily understandable framework” but one that is predicated by its ability to intervene whenever a jurisdiction is seen as non-trusted or suspect or where laws can’t be extended.
PTI
