The much-awaited draft
data protection bill prepared by an expert group headed by former Supreme Court judge B.N. Srikrishna was submitted on Friday to IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad. The report was earlier expected to be submitted by May.
According to Prasad, the draft bill will be put up for public consultation after which it will be sent for parliamentary approval.
“This is an overarching law applicable to all entities, including Aadhaar. The law says what needs to be done and deals with all aspects of consent,” said Justice Srikrishna while submitting the report.
“Matters related to Aadhaar are still under consideration of the Supreme Court and we have to wait for the judgment,” he added.
An appellate tribunal will be established to address grievances of the public on consent and data privacy matters.
The government had on 31 July last year constituted a 10-member committee of experts headed by Justice Srikrishna to study various issues relating to data protection and to make specific suggestions on the principles to be considered for data protection as well as suggest a draft data protection bill.
Other members of the committee include telecom secretary Aruna Sundararajan, Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) chief executive Ajay Bhushan Pandey, and National Cyber Security coordinator Gulshan Rai.
A white paper drafted by the committee of experts on the data protection framework was released by the ministry of electronics and information technology on 27 November. It sought “to designate certain lawful grounds under which data can be processed, even in the absence of consent”.
The committee seeks to put the onus on stakeholders and the public through a questionnaire on issues such as collection of personal data, consent of consumers, penalties and compensation, code of conduct, and an enforcement model that should be set up.
