The union ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY) is likely to introduce today the new and latest version of the data protection bill, which has been in the works since 2017, officials familiar with the matter said.
Union minister for Meity Ashwini Vaishnaw will hold a press conference at 3pm on issues related to the ministry, a press statement said. The bill that is being redrawn after being withdrawn in Parliament by the government during the Monsoon session.
According to the supplementary list of business in the Lok Sabha, Vaishnaw said the move to withdraw the bill was for the “protection of the digital privacy of individuals relating to their personal data, to specify the flow and usage of data, to create a relationship of trust between persons and entities processing the data, to protect the rights of individuals whose data are processed, to create a framework for organisational and technical measures in processing of data, to lay down norms for social media platforms, cross-border transfer and accountability of entities processing data.
The Bill, as approved by a parliamentary joint committee, proposed to set up a data protection authority, frame policies for non-personal data, including anonymized data under the same legislation, define significant social media platforms based on a threshold of users, decide penalties for data fiduciaries for failing to comply with the country’s first ever data protection law and governance of cross border transfer of data were some of the provisions of the Bill. It also proposed to define sensitive, critical and personal data, and insist on data localisation.
The new bill proposes to set up an appellate body known as the Data Protection Board, instead of the Data Protection Authority, as first reported by HT in August.
