Personal Data Protection Bill: Jio, Airtel, Paytm Oppose Cross-Border Data Transfer

Telecom majors Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel and digital payments firm Paytm have opposed the Centre’s move to allow the transfer of personal data of Indians to ‘trusted geographies’ under the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2022.

While the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) has supported the government’s proposal to allow transfer of data to “trusted geographies”, the three companies have opposed the idea despite being members of the industry association, ET reported.

As per the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, personal data can be transferred to “trusted geographies”. The government will come out with a list of countries, from time-to-time, where personal data can be transferred from India.

Through a submission routed through the IAMAI, Airtel, Paytm and Jio have officially communicated their position to the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).

Jio is strongly opposed to any form of cross-border transfer of personal data of Indians. Rather, it wants the Indian government to mandate that personal data of Indians must reside in the country itself, as per the report.

The telecom companies are of the view that transfer of data will mean that India’s law enforcement agencies will face difficulties in accessing data of Indian citizens if it is processed by an overseas telco or a tech company based out of India.

In case of any data misuse, the impacted Indian individual will find it difficult to get a legal recourse. “Indian law enforcement agencies may be unable to help as they are unlikely to have real-time access to the private data of Indian citizens once it is transferred outside the country,” the telcos said.

Before whitelisting any foreign countries, the government needs to ensure rights of Indian users are equally enforceable, and that local law enforcement agencies have access to Indian user data processed in a third country, the companies contended.

They also added that Indian companies would lose interest in investing in expensive data centres locally if the government allows cross-border data transfers. “There would be no business case to build state-of-the-art digital storage infrastructure in such a situation and existing investments will also go waste,” a source was quoted as saying in the report.

MeitY released the much-awaited draft Digital Personal Data Protection Bill in November last year.

As per the draft, the provisions of the Bill will be applicable to processing of digital personal data outside the territory of India as well if such processing is in connection with any profiling of, or activity of offering goods or services to individuals within the territory of India.

Industry body IAMAI recently called the Bill industry-friendly. The IAMAI said that the Bill has struck the right balance between protecting the interests of the data principals while leaving enough room for tech startups to innovate and grow.