India Raises Penalty Amount To Rs 500 Crore For Violation Of Data Policy In New Draft Bill

India on Friday released the draft of a new comprehensive data protection bill that has raised the penalty amount to up to Rs 500 crore for violating the provisions proposed under the draft Digital Personal Data Protection Bill 2022. This comes three months after the government had withdrawn a previous bill that had alarmed big technology companies.

The draft proposes to set up a Data Protection Board of India, which will carry on functions as per the provisions of the bill.

The draft personal data protection bill in 2019 proposed a penalty of Rs 15 crore or 4 per cent of the global turnover of an entity.

“If the Board determines at the conclusion of an inquiry that noncompliance by a person is significant, it may, after giving the person a reasonable opportunity of being heard, impose such a financial penalty as specified in Schedule 1, not exceeding rupees five hundred crore in each instance,” the draft said.

The draft, now up for public consultation, will be present in the next Parliamentary session. The Bill seeks allowance of data exchange outside India and provides penalties following data breaches.

The draft has proposed a graded penalty system for data fiduciary that will process the personal data of data owners only in accordance with the provisions of the Act.

The same set of penalties will be applicable to the Data processor — which will be an entity that will process data on behalf of the Data Fiduciary.

The draft proposes a penalty of up to Rs 250 crore in case the Data Fiduciary or Data Processor fails to protect against personal data breaches in its possession or under its control.

The draft is open for public comment till December 17. 

Union telecom and IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said that in the Data Protection Bill 2021, the joint parliamentary committee had suggested 88 changes in a 91 section-Bill leaving the government with no choice but to withdraw the same. 

(with PTI inputs)