On 18 November 2022 the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology published a draft Digital Data Protection Bill, 2022, for public comments.

In our response to the Ministry, we point that many of the safeguards based on the concepts of necessity and proportionality that were laid down by the Supreme Court in the Puttaswamy decision have, in practice, been diluted or removed from this draft Bill. The grounds for processing personal data have been widened, the concept of “deemed consent” has been used to expand on the exceptions from consent, and the state and its instrumentalities have been granted broad and far-reaching exemptions from complying with the draft Bill. The age of consent should be re-framed to prevent onerous compliance. The draft Bill is also overly prescriptive and it takes many ex-ante functions away from the ambit of the Data Protection Board of India.

Comments on the draft Digital Data Protection Bill, 2022, Urvashi Aneja, Rishab Bailey, Aman Nair, K Shashidhar, Karthik Suresh, January 2023.