Through the years, India has seen several iterations of a Data Protection law. Digital rights have grown exponentially relevant with an increase in the digitization of citizens’ daily activities. To effectively regulate such increased digitization, Parliament finally enacted the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 after receiving Presidential assent on 11th August, 2023. This marked a significant development in India’s data protection journey.
While the previous Data Protection Bills included many significant developments in terms of rights, duties, and grievance mechanisms, the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 introduced several important changes to key areas.
SFLC.in has prepared a comparative analysis of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 with the previous Bills, i.e., The Personal Data Protection Bill, 2018; The Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019; Joint Parliamentary Committee Report of 2021; and Draft Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2022.
The comparison has been undertaken on the basis of the most significant changes to the key areas of the data protection framework, including the Scope of application, Data Protection Principles, Rights of the Data Principals, and Obligations of the Data Fiduciaries, amongst others. The aim of this exercise is to map the trajectory of the key provisions under data protection regulations that were introduced in Parliament, or analyzed through Parliamentary Committee(s).
