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On Wednesday the government withdrew the Personal Data Protection Bill from Lok Sabha, saying it will come out with a "set of fresh legislations" that will fit into the comprehensive legal framework.
This comes 4 years later, after 78 sittings spread over 184 hours and 20 minutes, a number of extensions, and multiple iterations including review by a Joint Committee of Parliament (JCP) that tabled its report in December of 2021. The bill faced unfavorable responses from a range of stakeholders including tech companies, privacy activists and legislators.
The statement circulated to Lok Sabha members on Wednesday said that the 2019 Bill was deliberated in great detail by the JCP, which proposed 81 amendments and 12 recommendations for a comprehensive legal framework for the digital ecosystem.
"Considering the report of the JCP, a comprehensive legal framework is being worked upon. Hence, in the circumstances, it is proposed to withdraw 'The Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019' and present a new bill that fits into the comprehensive legal framework," said the statement.
In addition to recommendations related to data privacy, the JCP’s report also proposed that social media companies that do not act as intermediaries are to be treated as content publishers, which means these companies become liable for content hosted on their platforms. The JCP also recommended including non-personal data in the Bill.
The JCP proposed 81 amendments to the Bill finalized by the Justice Srikrishna panel and 12 recommendations including expanding its mandate to include discussions on non-personal data, which changes the Bill's mandate from personal data protection to broader data protection, along with changes on the regulation of social media companies, using only “trusted hardware” in smartphones, and other such issues.
In a tweet after the bill was withdrawn, Minister of State for IT Rajeev Chandrashekhar said, ‘this will soon be replaced by a comprehensive framework of global standard laws including digital privacy laws for contemporary and future challenges and catalyse Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision’.