Personal Data Bill panel takes input from officials, companies : Tech News

The Joint Parliamentary Committee that is studying the crucial Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019 is consulting with various stakeholders, including regulators and companies, to understand how personal and sensitive data is processed as it gives final touches to its report.

The panel, headed by BJP member of parliament PP Chaudhary, is likely to submit the report in the upcoming winter session of Parliament.

The learnings will be included to ensure enough safeguards on data protection, especially with regard to how data is processed by various entities, Chaudhary told ET.

The committee members met officials of capital markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) and National Payments Corp of India (NPCI) – which runs the popular Unified Payments Interface payments railroad – in Mumbai on Wednesday, following which it was slated to meet representatives of IT services providers Infosys and Wipro in Bengaluru on Thursday.

The committee members will also survey the campuses of organizations such as the Unique Identification Authority of India and visit the Central Processing Centre of the Income Tax department and the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) in Bengaluru in the coming days.

The committee has already held extensive consultations in New Delhi earlier this year where it called representatives from companies like social media network Facebook, law firms and IT industry bodies including Nasscom.

“We want to understand the processing systems of the fiduciaries like large banks and how data is processed by organizations like the NPCI or the I-T department,” Chaudhary said.

“We want to know what mechanisms are being followed for data protection, if anything is leaked… if there is any failure it can create a chaotic situation,” he added.

The idea is to visit the physical centres of large data processors in the country and understand how they function in real time.

“The committee does not just want to hear it theoretically but wants to be satisfied about the safeguards in place and if there are any gaps… then they will be “strengthened” in the Bill,” said Chaudhary, who took over as chairman of the JPC after former chairman Meenakshi Lekhi was appointed as a minister of state for external affairs and culture.

The committee has been deliberating the much-awaited Bill for close to two years now and has seen several delays in the submission of its report, firstly due to the Covid-19 pandemic and later as new members had to be appointed since some existing ones took charge as union ministers.

Jairam Ramesh, one of the members of the committee, tweeted last week that it had completed its deliberations on all aspects of the Bill. “The discussions have been very enriching throughout this exercise. It reflects Parliament at its consensual best. The report will be presented during the Winter session,” he said.

In 2017, the government
appointed an expert committee headed by former Supreme Court judge BN Srikrishna to draft a data protection or a privacy Bill.

After extensive consultations, the panel submitted a report on the data protection regime in India along with a draft legislation to the government in July 2018.