Personal Data Protection Bill to be tabled after 2019 general elections

The Personal Data Protection Bill, 2018 is likely to be tabled in the June session of Parliament, after the 2019 general elections, according to media reports.

The bill has been sent to the law ministry from Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology for minor changes and comments. The bill which was framed based on the draft of submitted by a committee headed by Justice BN Srikrishna in July was expected to be tabled in the winter session of Parliament.

An official told The Economic Times that tabling the bill in the budget session is also ruled out.

The bill will make individual consent central to data sharing and provides a framework for government and private entities in India to process personal data.

Public consultation around the draft bill invited 600 responses from Indian and multi-national companies, including the US government. The bill requires personal data of Indians as well as processing data to be stored in local servers in the country. It also prohibits data to be transferred across borders.

The bill categorises personal data into different buckets including sensitive and critical, laying down guidelines on storage and processing. It also proposes setting up a Data Protection Authority in India for supervision and a penalty scheme, levying a 4% fine on the total turnover of a company for offenders.

The bill has garnered strong response from startups, consumer internet companies, and social media and technology companies in India which have said their costs for setting up local storage and processing capabilities for data collected by them has increased. The bill also borrows from the European Union's General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) on localisation of data.

The government recently tabled a bill on Thursday making the use of Aadhaar ID voluntary only for opening a bank account and getting a mobile phone connection.