Union Budget: ₹2 crore for Data Protection Board establishment, salary expenses
The DPB is empowered to direct data fiduciaries to take remedial or mitigation measures in case of personal data breach, or act when a user complains to them
The ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY) has been allocated ₹2 crore to meet the establishment and salary expenses of the Data Protection Board in FY25. Of this ₹2 crore, ₹4 lakh is for capital expenditure, which includes fixed assets such as the digital portal, and ₹ 1.96 crore for revenue expenditure (salaries, etc).
DPB is crucial to operationalising the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, which was notified in the gazette in August 2023. It will consist of a chairperson and members to be determined by the central government. The salaries will also be determined by the central government.
The DPB is empowered to direct data fiduciaries to take remedial or mitigation measures in case of personal data breach, or act when a user complains to them.
For FY25, the Budget estimate for MeitY increased 52.12% from ₹14,421.25 crore (RE 2023-24) to ₹21,936.90 crore (BE 2024-25). This is also a 2.6% increase from the allocation made in the interim Budget ( ₹21,385.15 crore) in February. a bulk of it was devoted to production-linked incentive (PLI) schemes to encourage hardware and semiconductor manufacturing. PLI for large-scale electronics manufacturing and IT hardware was increased by 35.96% from ₹4,559.88 (RE-2023-24) crore to ₹6,200 crore (BE-2024-25), the same as the interim Budget.
The allocation for cybersecurity projects increased by 89.75% from ₹400 crore (RE-2023-24) to ₹759 crore (2024-25), the same as the interim Budget. For CERT, which is a part of the department of telecommunications, it shrunk by 96% from ₹218.49 crore to ₹8.54 crore.
The allocation for the National Informatics Centre increased by 12.67% from ₹1,552 crore (RE, FY24) to ₹1,748.64 crore for 2024-25, the same as the interim Budget. It was reduced by ₹2 crore to ₹240 crore compared to the interim Budget for Computer Emergency Response Team (Cert-In). It still marked a 14.42% increase from ₹208 crore (RE FY24).
Overall, the allocations for autonomous bodies under MeitY, including the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), contracted by 7.73% from ₹1,842.5 crore to ₹1,700 crore, the same as the interim Budget. UIDAI’s budget decreased by 25% from ₹800 crore to ₹600 crore. UIDAI officials told the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology in December 2023 that their revenue for FY23 was ₹770 crore.
₹38.76 crore has been allocated for setting up the Centralized International Out Roamer (CIOR), which detects and blocks spoof international calls that show Indian numbers. This marked a marginal increase compared to the interim Budget.
