Cabinet approves Personal Data Protection Bill

The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019 that deals with the privacy and security of data of Indian citizens.

The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019 that deals with the privacy and security of data of Indian citizens. The Bill is likely to be introduced in the ongoing Winter Session of Parliament.

Union Information and Broadcasting (I&B) Minister Prakash Javadekar said that it was a very important Bill and deals with the data protection of citizens. He said that it will look at how the interests of the people and the country are handled.

The Central government had constituted a committee of experts on data protection, chaired by Justice (retd) BN Srikrishna to study various issues relating to data protection and come out with the Data Protection Bill. The Srikrishna Committee had brought out a draft Personal Data Protection Bill (PDPB). The framework had sought to put in place a culture of privacy by design and promote concepts such as consent framework, purpose limitation, storage limitation, and data minimization among various other privacy-oriented concepts.

The ministry had held wide consultations on the recommendations of the committee to finalise the draft legislation. It had also sought feedback from people on the draft of the bill last year. (ANI)