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A day after Telecom and IT Minister, Ashwini Vaishnaw’s reported remark on the draft Data Protection Bill, Karti Chidambaram, one of the members of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Communications & IT, said that there is no question of giving a ‘thumbs up’ to the draft Bill as it has not been placed before the Committee yet.
“The IT Minister @AshwiniVaishnaw @GoI_MeitY has said that the Standing Committee on Communications & IT has approved the draft Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2022. As a Member of the Committee, I would like to categorically state that the Bill has not been approved,” Chidambaram posted on Twitter late on Thursday.
The development comes after Vaishnaw was reported as saying, “I would like to share some good news that the Parliamentary Standing Committee on IT and Communications, which is the committee which deals with this subject, they are before even taking to the Parliament, they have in advance, submitted and they have given a big thumbs-up to it.”
businessline has a recording of the Minister’s statement.
A day after Telecom and IT Minister, Ashwini Vaishnaw’s remark on the draft Data Protection Bill, Congress MP Karti Chidambaram said that there was no question of giving a ‘thumbs up’ to the draft Bill as it had not been placed on the table of the Committee yet. Nasscom on the other hand clarified that the Minister never said the committee ‘approved’ the bill. So what did the Minister actually say? Businessline’s Ayushi Kar was at the event and recorded this clip, where the Minister replies to Debjani Ghosh, President, Nasscom. Listen in.
It was part of a session at the event when Debjani Ghosh, President, Nasscom asked the Minister, “...Talking about Data Protection Bill, one ask from the industry is please get it back as soon as you can. We all are here excited really for India to finally have a data protection bill in place.”
Nasscom’s tweet
However, after media reported the statement on Friday, Nasscom said in a tweet that the Minister had merely reassured the industry that this is high priority and all steps are being taken to table the Bill in Parliament at the earliest including reviews and discussions with the Parliamentary Committee on Communications and IT. But, Nasscom said the Minister did not say that the Standing Committee had approved the draft bill.
“We would like to clarify that Minister Vaishnaw did not state the bill has been ‘approved’ by the committee,” Nasscom said.
Ministry of Electronics and IT refused to comment and forwarded what Nasscom had tweeted.
Meanwhile, Karti Chidambaram added that Parliamentary procedure mandates that a bill after introduction in the House, the Speaker or Chairman may recommend it for examination to the Committee.
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