CIS Comments and Recommendations on the Data Protection Bill, 2021

After nearly two years of deliberations and a few changes in its composition, the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC), on 17 December 2021, submitted its report on the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019  (2019 Bill). The report also contains a new version of the law titled the Data Protection Bill, 2021 (2021 Bill). Although there were no major revisions from the previous version other than the inclusion of all data under the ambit of the bill, some provisions were amended.

This document is a revised version of the comments we provided on the 2019 Bill on 20 February 2020, with updates based on the amendments in the 2021 Bill. Through this document we aim to shed light on the issues that we highlighted in our previous comments that have not yet been addressed, along with additional comments on sections that have become more relevant since the pandemic began. In several instances our previous comments have either not been addressed or only partially been addressed; in such instances, we reiterate them.

These general comments should be read in conjunction with our previous recommendations for the reader to get a comprehensive overview of what has changed from the previous version and what has remained the same. This document can also be read while referencing the new Data Protection Bill 2021 and the JPC’s report to understand some of the significant provisions of the bill.

Read on to access the comments | Review and editing by Arindrajit Basu. Copy editing: The Clean Copy; Shared under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license