A joint parliamentary committee made 81 modifications to the Personal Data Protection Bill, which intended to limit how a person’s data may be used by businesses and the government.
A thorough legislative structure that will pave the way for a new bill is reportedly being worked on in light of the joint parliamentary committee’s report.
After receiving vociferous criticism from the opposition Congress and Trinamool Congress, among others, who claimed the data privacy law infringed citizens’ fundamental rights, the bill was forwarded to the panel in 2019.
The opposition parties said that the law granted the government broad authority to obtain peoples’ personal information under dubious circumstances, citing national security and other factors.
In an effort to stop the spread of “fake news,” the law apparently would have also forced major social media platforms to provide an identity-verification option.
For businesses like Facebook and its WhatsApp and Instagram divisions, Twitter, and others, all of which have millions of users in India, the requirement would certainly pose a series of technological and policy challenges.
Top technology firms and other industry participants eagerly anticipated the Personal Data Protection bill because it might change how all significant internet service providers process, store, and transfer data on Indian consumers.