Question : Data Protection

Will the Minister of ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY be pleased to state:

(a) whether the Government has received any report from Justice B.N. Srikrishan Committee on data protection along with draft legislation on data protection;
(b) if so, the details thereof;
(c) whether the report categorises data into personal and non-personal data along with the identification of super sensitive data and if so, the details thereof;
(d) the categories of personal data identified in the said report;
(e) whether the Government has accepted the classification of personal data in the report and if so, the details thereof; and
(f) whether the Government will include non-personal data in the proposed legislation on data protection and if so, the details thereof and if not, the reasons therefor?

(a) and (b): The Government had constituted a Committee of Experts on data protection, chaired by Justice (Retd) B.N. Srikrishna, Supreme Court of India to study various issues relating to data protection. The committee had submitted its report and a draft bill which are available at https://meity.gov.in/data-protection-framework.

(c) and (d): Chapter 8 of the above draft Bill speaks about classifying personal data into sensitive personal data and critical personal data.

(e) : Based on the recommendations of the Committee of Experts and a multitude of feedback received from diverse stakeholders, the draft bill has been duly updated and the Personal Data Protection (PDP) Bill, 2019 has been introduced in Parliament during the winter session 2019 and the bill has been referred to a Joint Committee of the Parliament. In this bill similar classification of personal data has been made.
(f) In the draft PDP Bill tabled in Parliament there is an enabling Clause 91 that facilitates use of non-personal data by Government as an input for policy making process.

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