New Data Privacy Bill Expected To Come Soon: FM Nirmala Sitharaman

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Wednesday (September 7) said that India will soon have a new privacy protection bill that will be comprehensive enough to address all the issues.

Speaking at the India Ideas Summit organised by the US-India Business Council, Sitharaman said, “Sooner rather than later you will have the bill coming.”

The government withdrew the Personal Data Protection Bill, which was in the making for years, last month.

Minister of Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw moved a motion in the Lok Sabha withdrawing the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2021 after a joint parliamentary committee (JPC) suggested 81 amendments to the bill. The government also said that it would introduce a new bill in the next parliamentary session. 

The minister has been working “very diligently” on data privacy, the finance minister said at the event. 

“I would credit the minister for having been very open about withdrawing the bill which was in the Parliament which was felt not addressing all issues,” she said. “He has assured that soon enough we will have the new data privacy bill which will be a product of consultations and will address every such concern most of us have had on the privacy bill.”

“And I am very confident about the extent of consultations that have happened both within India and with experts from outside,” she added.

Separately, speaking at another event earlier this week, Vaishnaw reiterated that a new version of the data protection bill will come soon. 

“I request the judicial community to come up with suggestions based on their experience of day to day working of our judicial system. We’re coming up with a complete overhaul of Cyber Laws & very soon, we will also present a New Telecom Bill,” the Ministry of Electronics & IT said in a tweet, quoting Vaishnaw.

“We are making the online world more accountable for what is published there,” said Vaishnaw.

The Data Protection Bill was first drafted by a panel headed by retired Supreme Court Judge BN Srikrishna in 2017. The Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019 was introduced in Parliament in December 2019. In December 2021, a draft Data Protection Bill, 2021 was submitted in Lok Sabha.

The government faced criticism from several legal and policy experts following the withdrawal of the bill in August. Some experts told Inc42 that it was unlikely that a new bill would come any sooner or that the process would be smoother.

Meanwhile, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the Minister of State for Electronics and Technology, had said that compliance for startups would have become significantly difficult if the bill was passed into law.