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Data protection bill, telecom bill by monsoon: Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw
The union minister was speaking at a Google India 2022 event sharing a stage with the global head of the tech giant Sundar Pichai
Union information and technology minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Monday said that the “Digital Personal Data Protection Bill and Telecommunication Bill” will be taken up by the government in the next monsoon session of the Parliament, which is usually slated for July 2023.
“It is a 14-16 month exercise. We expect the two existing bills to be passed in Parliament by July-August. We are giving a lot of time to consultation and the solutions that are emerging are really good,” he said.
The government has extended the last date for receiving public feedback on the bill to January 2.
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Vaishnaw was speaking at the ‘Google India event 2022’ sharing a stage with the global head of the tech giant Sundar Pichai.
“We’re targeting the creation of a comprehensive regulatory framework including the telecom bill which looks at the telecom sector, the digital personal data protection bill which looks at the non-personal data and the digital India bill,” said the union minister.
“Once we have our data protection bill and digital India bill in place, it will create a robust framework in which we can use some of the available data facets and use them and harness the power of technology to provide better solutions and services,” he added.
“Our focus is on the middle class and poorer sections of society and as a government, we are very keen to make sure that every marginalized section of the society is able to get a similar level of technology as the better endowed,” Vaishnaw said.
The new draft of the data protection bill was released on November 18 this year.
Among the aspects that experts pointed to were the issues left to be prescribed later via rules that the government will draw up, a process that would not need parliamentary approval.
Among these are additional purposes to which deemed consent will apply, the purposes for which there will be an exemption on the additional protections when data of children is processed, and the strength, composition, terms and conditions of appointment and service of the Data Protection Board and its officers and employees.
