Indian Government seeks comments on the Personal Data Protection Bill 2018

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India, is seeking public comments on the Personal Data Protection Bill by the Justice Srikrishna Committee by 10 September 2018. Some of the salient features of the draft include: defining personal data; classifying sensitive personal data; the need for consent to process personal data; providing certain rights to data principals such as right to be forgotten; confirmation and access, right to data portability etc.; extending the law to data fiduciaries who may be located overseas but processing Indian data; need for platforms to adhere to certain accountability and transparency meansures such a privacy by design, record keeping, appointing a data protection officer, etc.; setting up an independent Data Protection Authority of India to oversee the enforcement of the bill and financial penalties for non compliance. Some of the most discussed aspects of the bill include the mandate of mainitaining a copy of all personal data locally, users not having complete ownership of their data and the role and authority of the state to process personal date without consent, etc.