About Project
In the judgement of K.S. Puttaswamy vs. Union of India, 2017, the Supreme Court of India (SC) recognised ‘right to privacy’ as a fundamental right. The Government of India (GoI) had formed a committee to study various issues relating to data protection, which proposed the draft Personal Data Protection Bill 2018 (draft bill). After a round of public consultation, The Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019 (bill) was introduced in Lok Sabha on December 11, 2019, with certain key changes to the previous draft.
The same has been referred to a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) of both houses of Parliament for review. The objective of the bill is to ‘provide for the protection of the privacy of individuals relating to their personal data, among other incidental issues. To this end, CUTS met with parliamentarians and members of the JPC and was advised to make recommendations on the bill. For this, we have prepared series of policy briefs on issues under the bill with recommendations informed by our evidence-based studies, matrix comparing data protection legislations of select jurisdictions and made recommendations for clause by clause amendments to the JPC.