Digital Personal Data Protection Bill (DPDPB) and Telecommunication Bill will be tabled in Parliament in the Monsoon session, as promised by the Centre, Ashwini Vaishnaw, Minister of Communications and Information Technology, said.

“Both the Bills (DPDPB and Telecom Bill) will come in Monsoon session as promised by us ... We are on track and preparations are going on,” Vaishnaw, told businessline.

Rebranding laws

According to Vaishnaw, things like telecom and data protection are part of India’s rebranding laws, rewriting rules/regulations for the digital economy.

“Our focus is to ensure that our horizontal growth are technology agnostic, dynamic and are capable of changing with the changing technologies. They are inclusive, focusing on the way our societies are structured and not just copying from some other geography. That’s the thought process we are putting in,” he said.

For example, DPDPB or the Telecom Bill, both are principle-based... they are not prescriptive, he said.

“Both the bills try to bring in... as we stand today, the latest position of the technology as we stand today and whatever we see in the foreseeable future, not mount by the legacy. Both the Bills have digital implementation/execution from day one, not the old paper execution. Both the Bills try to bring in an element of trust between the citizens and the government.. not the old system in which bills were made primarily on mistrust. Laws were enacted primarily on the premise of mistrust... it’s totally a different mindset,” Vaishnaw explained.

He added that the world was following the European templates (General Data Protection Regulation) so far, but now the world wants to seriously take a look at the Indian Bill (DPDPB) as the template.

Fresh regulations

The government in August last year, had withdrawn the erstwhile Personal Data Protection (PDP) Bill from Lok Sabha and said it would come out with a set of fresh legislations that will fit into the comprehensive legal framework at the earliest.

Then it had released a fresh draft Digital Personal Data Protection Bill 2022 in November which was an over-simplified version of the PDP Bill 2019. However, according to experts new draft Bill was diluted in many parts and said it gives the government ultimate power of decision makers.

Currently, the opposition MPs like Karti P Chidambaram who are part of the Standing Committee on Information Technology (IT) have expressed serious concerns about protection of privacy in the DPDPB draft and said that there may have around 40 suggestions for the government to make it better.

The draft Telecommunication Bill 2022 was also released in September last year to make various changes to make to the current telecom regulatory framework with the advancements and challenges in the sector, instead of riding on the rules enacted more than 70 years back.

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