A Joint Committee on Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019, headed by BJP MP PP Chaudhary, tabled its report in both the Houses on Thursday recommending among others that all social media platforms which do not act as intermediaries be treated as publishers and held accountable for the content they host.
The panel finalized its report in 78 sittings encompassing 184 hours and 20 minutes after being granted six extensions to submit its report. The committee received 234 memorandums and each was analyzed and incorporated after getting the response of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) on each suggestion.
Thereafter, the Committee heard the views and suggestions of 31 experts, representatives of statuary, regulatory, government bodies, data experts , cyber security experts as well as organizations representing Industry and professional bodies.
The committee has also taken view points from Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB),National Investigation Agency (NIA), Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) and Reserve Bank of India (RBI).
The committee members also went to study tours to Mumbai ,and Bengaluru between October 26 and 29 this year where they visited the data centres of SBI and UIDAI; Centre for Development of Advanced Computing(C-DAC) and Central Processing Centre of Income Tax Department.
The committee also received dissent notes from Manish Tewari, Ms. Mahua Moitra, Gaurav Gogoi, Ritesh Pandey, Vivek K.Tankha, Jairam Ramesh, Derek O' Brien and Dr. Amar Patnaik on the bill.
In a dissent note, Vivek K Tankha said blanket protection to the government agency is neither constitutional nor in the interest or people's democracy.
India already has many data assets of national importance including Aadhar, Passport Seva, Open Data Stack (data.gov.in), MCA2 l , GSTN, Unified Payment Interface (UPI), WRIS (Jalshakti), DISHA (rural development) and Bhuvan (ISRO).
With the world 's second largest population, the fifth largest economy with GDP of $3.0 trillion, over 700 million internet users and over 400 million smart phone users, India is generating mammoth amounts of data on a daily basis. India generates about 150 exabytes of data annually and is amongst the fastest growing data generating nations in the world.
The Bill, seeking to provide for the protection of personal data of individuals and establish a Data Protection Authority for the same, was brought in Parliament in 2019 and was referred to the Joint Committee for further scrutiny on the demand of opposition members.