According to Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology and Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, the government cannot violate the privacy of citizens under the proposed Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Bill 2022. The government will get access to personal data only in exceptional circumstances such as national security, pandemic and natural disasters.
Speaking during an online discussion, Chandrasekhar said that the National Data Governance Framework Policy has provision for handling the anonymisation of data, which is not part of the draft DPDP Bill 2022. The minister also said the proposed Data Protection Board, which will adjudicate matters related to data protection, will be independent and will not have any government officer on the board.
The minister further said the National Data Governance Framework has provisions to deal with anonymous data while the scope of the DPDP Bill is limited to personal data protection only. The anonymised data, standards of anonymisation and the use of anonymous data will be decided by the India Data Management Office (IDMO) under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. He added that the data protection bill will have oversight of the high court as all of its decisions will be scrutinised by the court system.
