The Personal Data Protection Bill receives approval by the Cabinet

Parliament's Monsoon Session, which begins on July 20 will go on till August 11

On Wednesday, July 5, the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2022 was passed by the Union Cabinet. The law is most likely to be submitted during the Parliament's Monsoon Session, which begins on July 20. In India, both online and offline data would be governed by the same law.

However, this bill only permits the processing of personal data with the consent of the data subject. However, there are specific circumstances in which the government may want information for reasons of law and order and national security.

A Data Protection Board will be established to oversee the Act's requirements. The data must be secured and deleted after use by those collecting under the terms of the law.

After the law is put into effect, people would have the right to inquire about how personal data is collected, stored, and processed. For each occurrence of a violation of the bill's rules, organisations would be subject to fines of up to Rs 250 crore, according to the proposed legislation. "The DPDP bill draught has been accepted by the Cabinet. In the upcoming session, it will be introduced in Parliament," a source informed PTI.

The Digital Personal Data Protection Bill is a piece of legislation that outlines the rights and responsibilities of the citizen and the duties of the data curator to use gathered data properly on the other. The Bill outlines the rights and responsibilities of users as well as the requirements placed on corporations in an effort to regulate and protect the use of personal data.

The Supreme Court decision in K.S. Puttuswamy v. Union of India (the "Puttaswamy Judgement"), which acknowledged "privacy" as intrinsic to the right to life and liberty, guaranteed by Article 21 of the Constitution of India, and thus made "right to privacy" a fundamental right, laid the groundwork for a single statute legislation for the protection of data in India. In order to protect individual privacy, the Puttaswamy Judgement serves as the foundation for both creating a prohibition against privacy-violating State activity and the State's obligation to regulate private contracts and private data sharing.

As a result, the Sri Krishna Committee was established and the Draught Personal Data Protection Bill was released in 2018. The Personal Data Protection Bill 2019 ("PDPB") was introduced in the Rajya Sabha in December 2019 after the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology amended the legislation in response to comments from stakeholders and the business community.

In December 2021, the Joint Parliamentary Committee for review from both houses, after 2 years shared its report with a new version of the Data Protection Bill-2021.

A new comprehensive data protection bill was unveiled by the government in November 2022, three months after it had withdrawn an earlier version that had worried major technological businesses.

The government announced that a more comprehensive version of the Digital Data Protection Bill would replace the earlier iteration. Ashwini Vaishnaw explained the reasons for the withdrawal by stating that the parliamentary committee that was reviewing the 91-section bill requested 88 revisions, which forced the administration to reevaluate the entire measure.

In November 2022, Ministry of Information and Technology released the draft Personal Data Protection Bill for Public consultations.

Following which, Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw stated in December of last year that the administration anticipates passing both the Telecommunications Bill and the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill during the Monsoon session of Parliament.

In April 2023, as the Supreme Court was hearing a case involving social media users' privacy concerns, the Centre informed the court that a new data protection bill was ready and will be submitted in the Monsoon session of Parliament in July.