Joint Committee gets extension to submit report on personal data protection bill

The Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) examining the Personal Data Protection Bill 2019 has been given an extension till the Winter Session to submit their report.

This will be the fifth time the committee’s tenure has been extended. 

Member of Parliament from Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)  PP Chaudhary was appointed the chairperson of the committee late on Thursday, replacing former chairperson Meenakshi Lekhi who was inducted into the cabinet as minister of state in the Ministry of External Affairs and Ministry of Culture.  

Apart from Lekhi, member of the JPC Rajeev Chandrasekhar was also inducted as a minister of state in the recent cabinet reshuffle.  

The committee also continues to have three vacancies.

On Thursday Lekhi made a statement saying that the report by the JPC on Personal Data Protection Bill had been submitted to the Lok Sabha Speaker and was ready to be adopted by the Parliament.  

The last sitting of the committee was held on December 29, 2020.  

The 30-member committee was formed on December 11, 2019 to review the bill introduced in the Parliament by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).  

The committee was expected to submit its report in the Budget Session of 2021 previously.  

MeitY had also formed a committee of experts in September 2019 to form rules on governance of non-personal data.  

The expert panel led by Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan submitted its draft report in December 2020.  

Earlier this month, chat messenger app WhatsApp told the Delhi High Court that it will not roll out its recent privacy update introduced first in January 2021 till the Personal Data Protection Bill becomes law.