Data Protection bill: New draft likely soon, big changes that are expected – Times of India

Data Protection bill may be up for another draft soon. The government is reportedly set to release a new draft of the Data Protection bill for public comments in a week. The Personal Data Protection (PDP) Bill — the draft of which was withdrawn in August after five years in the making — is being renamed the Digital Data Protection Bill. The initial Bill had seen major pushback from large tech companies as well as Indian startups. Global IT giants Google, Meta, Amazon and others have appreciated the government’s move to withdraw the parliamentary panel version of the bill.
Why was the earlier Data Protection bill withdrawn
As to why the earlier version of the bill was pulled back, the Union telecom and IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said that the joint parliamentary committee which went through the original draft suggested 88 amendments to a bill of 91 sections, which led the government to decide that there was “no option” but to withdraw the original bill completely. He further said that a lot of changes had taken place during the Covid pandemic, leading to newer learnings. The government plans to integrate these in the laws.

What may change in the draft of the new Data Protection bill
According to a report in Economic Times, the government will propose to allow transfer of data and its storage in “trusted geographies” in the revised draft of the data protection Bill, doing away with the data localisation requirement proposed in the earlier version. This requirement was especially opposed by global IT companies. The government will define which geographies are “trusted” from time to time.
Other speculated changes include that criminal penalties proposed on employees of companies involved in data breach may be removed in the new draft. These may be replaced by financial penalties. The revised draft may also drop provisions to regulate non-personal data and social media.