Mains Practice Questions

Approach

• Briefly introduce Digital Personal data Protection Bill, 2022.
• Discuss mains features of Digital Personal data Protection Bill, 2022.
• Discuss whether it protects citizens right to privacy or not.
• Conclude suitably.

Introduction

• Recently, the Union Government has released a revised personal data protection bill, now called the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2022.

Body

• Main features of the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2022:
  • Data Principal and Data Fiduciary:
    • Data Principal refers to the individual whose data is being collected.
    • Data Fiduciary is the entity (individual, company, firm, state etc.), which decides the “purpose and means of the processing of an individual’s personal data”.
  • Rights of Individuals:
    • Access to Information:
      • The bill ensures that individuals should be able to “access basic information” in languages specified in the eighth schedule of the Indian Constitution.
    • Right to Consent:
      • Individuals need to give consent before their data is processed.
      • Individuals also have the right to withdraw consent from a Data Fiduciary.
    • Right to Erase:
      • Data principals will have the right to demand the erasure and correction of data collected by the data fiduciary.
    • Right to Nominate:
      • Data principals will also have the right to nominate an individual who will exercise these rights in the event of their death or incapacity.
  • Data Protection Board:
    • The Bill also proposes to set up a Data Protection Board to ensure compliance with the Bill.
    • In case of an unsatisfactory response from the Data Fiduciary, the consumers can file a complaint to the Data Protection Board.
  • Cross-border Data Transfer:
    • The bill allows for cross-border storage and transfer of data to “certain notified countries and territories” provided they have a suitable data security landscape, and the Government can access data of Indians from there.
  • As the above features like access to information, right to consent, right to erase and right to nominate and therefore, we can say that it ensures privacy of the citizens and its significance are as follows:
  • Significance in safeguarding the privacy of the citizens:
    • The bill recognizes the data principal's right to postmortem privacy (withdraw consent) which was missing from the earlier Personal Data Protection Bill (PDP), 2019 but had been recommended by the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC).
      • The provisions of the bill provided to the individuals like to give consent before their data is processed, right to demand the erasure and correction of data collected by the data fiduciary and establishing of a Data Protection Board to ensure compliance with the Bill falls in line with K. S. Puttaswamy case which unanimously held that Indians have a constitutionally protected fundamental right to privacy that is an intrinsic part of life and liberty under Article 21.

Conclusion

The proposed bill is a good example of smart and effective law that is simple and flexible and further, manages the interests of the stakeholders because it has taken into account all known privacy standards as well as the global experience.