Draft Personal Data Protection Bill 2022 much better than the earlier version: Cyril Shroff

Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Friday unveiled the draft Personal Data Protection Bill 2022, which raised the penalty amount to up to Rs 500 crore for violating provisions under the proposed Bill.

"The purpose of this Bill is to provide for the processing of digital personal data in a manner that recognises the right of individuals to protect their personal data, the need to process personal data for lawful purposes and for other incidental purposes," an explanatory note of the draft bill said.

Commenting on the key tenets of the  draft Bill, Cyril Shroff, Managing Partner of Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas told Business Today, “While comparing the previously introduced bill by the government with the new bill, I found out that the earlier version was based on EU general data protection regulation (GDPR) which is one of the leading international standards. However, the new version significantly moves away from the earlier one and introduces significant concepts that simplify it in an easily understandable way. We have to just wait and watch for the final enactment of the bill in the Winter session as that will speak volumes about the addition or subtractions from the bill.”

He welcomed the draft Bill's length being cut down to 30 pages from the previous version that ran into 100 pages.

On being asked about what the draft Bill is trying to aim at, he said, "Privacy is the fundamental right and every previous judgment by courts has proved the same and therefore protection of the data is of utmost importance. There are rights and duties of the citizens or what the government calls it as ‘Digital Nagrik’ and correspondingly there are obligations, penalties and much more associated with it."

He said that the country is going to see a strict enforcement regime around data protection and it must happen for the betterment of India. 

Cyril Shroff further explained by saying that, “Firstly there will be a significant investment in technology to ensure that the expectations of the new framework are maintained. Once clear standards are set out, companies will have to make their own policies as well.”

On being asked about the awareness of rights for the users, he commented, “If there is something on data localisation, then that’s a different matter altogether. With the new bill in place, the data cannot be exported in any manner. However, there is an exception which is called trusted jurisdiction but it has not been defined clearly. Now discussions should arise on who should be trusted before the exporting of data.”

Also Read: You can withdraw consent to share data anytime you want: Draft data protection bill 

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