Data Protection Bill What is the status of Data Protection Bill?

Apart from politics, there is no distraction in government work, especially parliamentary work. But a statement by Union Information and Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnab created confusion. He said that the draft of the Information Protection Bill has been approved by the Standing Committee of the Parliament. In a recent event, he said, the parliamentary committee has given ‘big thumbs up’ i.e. it has given big support. Immediately after his speech, two members of the parliamentary committee said, the bill has not yet come before the committee, so how was it approved?

That is why there is confusion that what is the status of the bill? In fact a data protection bill drafted by the government has been withdrawn. This was followed by the drafting of the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2022, which has to be considered by the Parliamentary Committee. Usually any bill is first introduced in the Parliament and from there it is sent to the Standing Committee on the concerned subject. Congress MP Karti Chidambaram and Trinamool Congress MP Jawahar Sarkar are members of the Standing Committee on Information and Technology. Both said the draft bill has not been formally sent to committee so far. Certain aspects of the bill have certainly been discussed, but only after the bill is formally referred to the Standing Committee can any decision be made.