GOVERNMENT ALLOWING EXEMPTIONS FOR THE CENTRE GOVERNMENT AND ITS AGENCIES,IN LEGISLATION OF THE DATA PROTECTION BILL,2022.

The digital personal data protection bill ,2023 which was introduced in the parliament on Thursday has been fraught with challenges ,intense scrutiny, and pushback from some of the biggest global tech companies.Nearly a year after the supreme court held the right to privacy as a fundamental right in a case ,the justice BN Srikrishna committee constituted by the central government presented a draft report that has become the first reference point for future data protection draft regulations in the country.In July 2018 ,the committee presented it's report to the government emphasising individuals constitutional rights over their data . Using the justice BN Srikrishna Committee report,the centre made its first inhouse attempt at drafting a privacy law and the result of which was the draft personal data protection Bill (PDP ) -2019 .The version has some contentious clauses that were vehemently opposed by the industry, especially norms around data localisation.The bill required that sensitive personal data will have to be mirrored in India and prohibited the export of undefined critical personal data .It classified data into the three categories.The joint action Committee of parliament has gone through the bill and faced major pushback from the stakeholders including big tech companies such as Facebook and Good,and privacy and the civil society activists and the centre in August 2022 decided to withdraw the Bill from the Parliament.The Government introduced a fresh draft of the legislation last November titled the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill ,2022.As the title suggested , the bill only dealt with personal data available in digital form,and excluded from its scope offline personal data or non personal data.The bill brought to record have retained the contents of the original version of the legislation proposed last November and exemptions for the central government and its agencies remain unchanging.The central government will have the right to exempt, "any instrumentality of the state" from adverse consequences citing National Security,relation with the foreign governments and maintenance of the public orders among the other things brought on the draft record.The Congress MP Manish Tiwari stated that the bill applies with full force to non government entities, and the entire government is going to be exempt from it and the NCP ,MP Supriya Sule opposed the bill saying that it was a complete insult and hurts the federal structure of country.The Bill also states that if an entity is penalized in more than two instances,the central government after hearing the entity can decide block their plateform in the country and this is a new addition which was not present in the 2022 draft.