Data Protection Bill, that was presented in the Indian Parliament in 2019, has now been officially withdrawn by the government led by Prime Minister Shri Narender Modi. The reason for such withdrawal after 3 years was because of a strong condemnation from privacy advocates pushed over by the opposition party of Congress.
If we verify the facts, the Data Protection Bill of 2019 was giving more rights to the government to access sensitive information generated by the public. After much speculation that the bill will be passed by the full-strength BJP led government, the decision to scrap it has surprised the populace as well as the opposition parties, especially Mrs. Sonia Gandhi and her kin.
“As the proposed laws were beyond obtaining modern digital dignity and were constantly being targeted by public admonition, the Indian Government scrapped,” said IT Minister Rajeev Chandrashekar, India.
However, in its place a “Comprehensive Legal Framework” will apparently be implemented after much discussions from elected representatives and bureaucrats, added Mr. Rajeev.
NOTE- In the monsoon parliamentary session of the year 2019, the Personal Data Protection Bill was proposed by the Parliamentarians. However, despite 81 suggested amendments and 12 recommendations to include some points, the bill could not gain traction from the opposition as some felt that it gave extraordinary powers to the Government to sneak into personal data of millions of citizens. A privacy advocacy group named ‘Internet Freedom Foundation’ sought legal interference on the bill as it was providing an access exemption to government agencies, and was giving a lot a free hand to large corporations, thus destructing the fundamental right of citizens to privacy to the core. It also directed tech giants such as Facebook, Google, Amazon and Meta to store sensitive info like financial, health, biometric data only on Indian soil.
