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A Guide to Drafting Privacy Policy under the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019

Posted by Shweta Reddy at Dec 31, 2020 12:00 AM |
The Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019, (PDP Bill) which is currently being deliberated by the Joint Parliamentary Committee, is likely to be tabled in the Parliament during the winter session of 2021.

The Bill in its current form, doesn’t have explicit transitory provisions i.e. a defined timeline for the enforcement of the provisions of the Bill post its notification as an enforceable legislation. Since the necessary subject matter expertise may be limited on short notice and out of budget for certain companies, we intend to release a series of guidance documents that will attempt to simplify the operational requirements of the legislation.

Certain news reports had earlier suggested that the Joint Parliamentary Committee reviewing the Bill has proposed 89 new amendments and a new clause. The nature and content of these amendments so far remain unclear. However, we intend to start the series by addressing some frequently asked questions around meeting the requirements of publishing a privacy notice and shall make the relevant changes post notification of the new Bill. The solutions provided in this guidance document are mostly based on international best practices and any changes in the solutions based on Indian guidelines and the revised PDP Bill will be redlined in the future.

The frequently asked questions and other specific examples on complying with the requirements of publishing a privacy policy have been compiled based on informal discussions with stakeholders, unsolicited queries from smaller organizations and publicly available details from conferences on the impact of the Bill. We intend to conduct extensive empirical analysis of additional queries or difficulties faced by smaller organizations towards achieving compliance post the notification of the new Bill. Regardless, any smaller organizations(NGOs, start-ups etc.) interested in discussing compliance related queries can get in touch with us.


Click to download the full report here. The report was reviewed by Pallavi Bedi and Amber Sinha.