12 recommendations made by Parl panel in report on Personal Data Protection

The Joint Committee on Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019, headed by PP Chaudhary, Member of Parliament, presented their report today, making recommendations to make changes to the draft legislation.

The 540-page report consists of 12 recommendations on data protection and privacy related to provisions made in the Bill.

It also includes a clause by clause examination of the Bill and contains 81 recommendations to make modifications and over 150 drafting corrections and improvements in various clauses of the Bill.

Among the main recommendations include having a single data protection authority (DPA) for both personal and non-personal data, considering social media platforms as publishers and holding them responsible for the content they host, mechanism to be followed for data protection when a child attains the age of majority, and developing an alternative to the SWIFT payment system.

In a statement regarding the Report, the Lok Sabha Secretariat noted that “the Committee have felt that though there are provisions under Clause 33 and 34 for cross-border transfer of data, some concrete steps must be taken by the Central Government to ensure that a mirror copy of the sensitive and critical personal data which is already in possession of the foreign entities be mandatorily brought to India in a time bound manner.”

Another recommendation made by the Committee includes not giving an employer complete freedom to process the personal data of an employee without his or her consent for the sake of employment purposes.

The qualification or position of a Data Protection Officer, which was proposed in the Bill to be employed by international companies in India, has been made more specific.

The Committee has said he or she should be holding a key position in the management of the company or other entities and must have adequate technical knowledge in the field.

Key managerial professionals include the Chief Executive Officer or the Managing Director or the Manager, the company secretary, whole-time Director, Chief Financial Officer or other such personnel as may be prescribed.

On cross border data flow, the Committee has recommended this: “In order to ensure a balance between the legitimate needs of businesses and the protection of the fundamental right of privacy of individuals and to protect the larger interests of the data principal vis-à-vis public policy, the Committee have suggested to insert a provision in the Clause 34(1)(a)whereby any contract or intra-group scheme allowing cross-border transfer of data, even after the consent of the data principal, may not be approved if such contract or intra-group scheme is against public policy”.

It has further said they were concerned with respect to the capacity of Government departments to protect the large volume of data that they collect. “The Committee observe that since the Government will be a significant data fiduciary, as per the provisions of the Bill, it will have to establish Standard Operating Procedures in the Ministries and Departments etc. to protect the huge amount of data that is collected,” the Lok Sabha communique said.

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