The Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology has released the draft Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2022 [DPDPB, 2022] for public consultation. The feedback on the DPDPB, 2022 may be submitted on MyGov website in a chapter wise manner by December 17, 2022. The link for submission of comments will be provided by the Ministry at a later date. While we appreciate that a draft bill has been put out for public consultation, we would have preferred if the Ministry had made available, through a white paper, the issues it considered while developing the “comprehensive legal framework”, of which the DPDPB, 2022 will be a crucial part. The DPDPB, 2022 contains around 30 clauses, shrunk considerably from previous drafts of data protection proposals which contained 90+ clauses. As per the explanatory memorandum this is to achieve simplicity in drafting, however has made the present version bereft of first principles at several places. Further, we are concerned that the notice of public consultation accompanying the DPDPB, 2022 states that “no public disclosure of the submissions will be made”. This will weaken public trust in the development of the DPDPB, 2022 as it hampers the principles of transparency and accountability in the consultation process. Below, we lay down some of our initial concerns after a preliminary reading of the draft.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://internetfreedom.in/iffs-first-read-of-the-draft-digital-personal-data-protection-bill-2022/