[ad_1]
The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Communications and Information Technology has lodged a complaint with the IT Ministry seeking delay in drafting rules under the contentious Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (DPDP), without specifying a timeline for the rollout of the Digital India Act .
In a report submitted to the Lok Sabha on February 8, a committee headed by Shiv Sena (Shinde) Member of Parliament (MP) Prataprao Jadhav asked the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) to prioritize the drafting of DPDP rules and ensure that the process is carried out within the prescribed six-month period. Completed within months.
The DPDP Bill was gazetted on August 11, 2023, but has not yet been enacted. In October, IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said the DPDP rules were almost ready and would be released for public consultation soon. On December 20, Minister of State for Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar said that the draft DPDP rules will be released for consultation in the next two days so that they can be notified in the first week of January. Vaishnaw had said that the draft rules would be subject to public consultation for at least 45 days. Once the rules are notified, they need to be submitted to Parliament for approval. Vaishnaw said the appointment of the data protection committee will be made after Parliament approves the notification rules. It now appears unlikely that this will happen before the 2024 election.
In its report, the committee said, “The Department has merely outlined the established practice of rule-making without specifying its intended end result. The Committee wishes to draw the attention of the Department to the established norm which provides that rules under the Act shall be It will be formulated within a month.”
“The Commission anticipates that the rules in this area should now be close to completion following the publication of the Data Protection Act on 11 August 2023. However, the Commission notes that the lack of an appropriate framework for the rules hampers notification of essential components of the Data Privacy Act, including data privacy laws [Protection] The committee is tasked with investigating violations of privacy and imposing penalties under the provisions of the Act. ”
The committee said the ministry should “formulate rules that are simple, easy to understand and manage in accordance with the law”
It also requires the ministry to develop a mechanism to ensure that the government processes personal data without consent for certain “legitimate purposes” (such as national security reasons, or the provision/issuance of subsidies, benefits, services, certificates) exceptions. , licenses and permits) are neither abused nor allowed to become a norm.
“[T]The Committee is concerned that these exceptions may be abused. The Ministry is therefore urged to put in place a mechanism to prevent these exceptions from becoming the norm and ensure that they are employed only in exceptional circumstances. … The Committee notes that the Department is aware that it may abuse these exceptions. However, the committee found that the ministry had not outlined anything specific in this regard,” the report said.
The group said it wanted the department to take “concrete action” to ensure that “default consent settings are designed to provide additional benefits to data subjects, particularly individuals who are not digitally literate”.
The report also asked the ministry to launch an awareness campaign to make the public aware of “alternative remedies in cases of harm caused by civil wrongdoing that violates their rights” and to establish a helpline number or an AI-based online chatbot “to provide the public with guide”. Especially after the enactment of the DPDP Bill 2023, affected individuals”.
It also expressed hope that the ministry would “expedite” amendments to the Information Technology Act, 2000 and other related bills so that all the bills are aligned with the DPDP Act.
The panel stressed the need to replace the “outdated” IT Act 2000 and asked MeitY to “immediately complete the framework of the Digital India Act and expedite its enactment without unnecessary delay.”
Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar mentioned for the first time that the government hopes to replace the IT Act with the Digital India Act in April 2022.
The ministry has held two public consultations on the “Draft Principles of Digital India Bill” in Bengaluru and Mumbai in March 2023 and May 2023 respectively. The third meeting was scheduled to be held in Delhi but was cancelled.
“After reviewing the actions taken by the ministry, the committee found that there was a lack of concrete timeline for the introduction of the Digital India Bill. There was no indication that the government would introduce the bill in the upcoming session of Parliament. The committee reiterated its previous recommendations and strongly urged the ministry Complete the Digital India (DIA) draft bill immediately without further delay,” the panel’s report said.
[ad_2]
Source link