Parliamentary Standing Committee approves the draft Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2022

The draft Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2022 (“DPDP Bill”) was published for inviting comments from the public and stakeholders last year in November 2022. The DPDP Bill aims to address concerns of the citizens of India, which is ongoing an emergence in the global data landscape.

The Union Minister for Communication and Information Technology, Mr Ashwini Vaishnaw has announced on March 2, 2023 that the DPDP Bill is set be presented before the Parliament for discussion since the parliamentary panel for Information Technology related matters (currently headed by Mr Prataprao Jadhav) has approved the DPDP Bill. In light of the approval of the parliamentary panel, the Bill is now slated to be presented before the Parliament in its ongoing Budget Session. It’ll be interesting to see if the bill is introduced in the parliament in the identical format as it was published for comments, or if some changes have been made pursuant to the comments submitted by the relevant stakeholders.

The Bill in its current form contains penalties for violation of its provisions on both the data subjects and data fiduciaries as well as wide scope for exemptions to be provided to various entities (from compliance with the provisions of the intended statute). Our detailed analysis on the provisions of the DPDP Bill can be accessed here - https:/blog/analysis-of-digital-personal-data-protection-bill-2022/.