The government is set to introduce the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Bill in Parliament. The final draft is shrouded in secrecy. Last week, Opposition members walked out of a meeting of the Parliamentary Standing Committee and submitted dissent notes, objecting to the adoption of a report on the DPDP Bill — they claimed that the Bill was neither shown to the members nor formally referred to the committee.
In November 2022, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) publicly circulated a draft of the Bill for consultation. It was fraught with problems. While campaigns and concerned citizens shared their suggestions, MeitY focused primarily on consulting industry and big tech companies on a law that will have vast ramifications for the information regime in India, and will impact every citizen of the country.
