The Cabinet’s approval paves the way for the Bill to be tabled in Parliament in the ongoing winter session
The government is learnt to have relaxed the mandatory storage and processing requirement for all kinds of personal data and made a case for the collection of anonymised data from companies for planning government schemes in its long-awaited draft data protection Bill, which was approved by the Union Cabinet on Wednesday.
The Bill categorises data as sensitive personal data and critical personal data. Sensitive data includes passwords, financial data, health data, sexual orientation, biometric data, genetic data, transgender status, and caste. Critical data will be defined by the government from time to time.
All companies will have to store the critical data of people within the country, but they can transfer sensitive data overseas after explicit consent of the data owner to process it only for purposes permissible under law once the Bill is approved by Parliament, government sources said.
There is a relaxation on storing a copy of all personal data in India, or mirroring. “The government will have the right to direct a data fiduciary to share anonymised or non-personal data for better targeting of service, policy-making, relief work, etc,” said a source. All other aspects of non-personal data will be handled by a committee headed by Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan. The Cabinet’s approval paves the way for the Bill to be tabled in Parliament in the ongoing winter session….Read More
