A Setback for Data Privacy Rights

The pullback of the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019 has nullified the multi-year efforts put in by various stakeholders that have gone into shaping the bill.

The union government’s withdrawal of the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019 (hereafter the PDP Bill) from Parliament during the 2022 monsoon session (Singh 2022) is a loss for the Indian citizens and an admission of defeat on the part of the government in its attempt to bring “big tech” (meaning the handful of dominant, the United States (US)-based tech multinationals) to heel. The last version to be withdrawn by the union government is the third iteration of the PDP Bill (Bhandari 2022), starting with the one proposed by the Justice B N Srikrishna Committee back in 2018.