Attracting a global audience, the much-awaited Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019 (“PDP Bill”) was recently introduced in the Indian Parliament and subsequently referred to a Joint Parliamentary Committee (“Committee”) of both the Houses on December 12, 2019. The PDP Bill is an omnibus, cross-sector privacy law for India, with noticeable similarities to the E.U. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act, amongst others. The Committee is required to issue its report on the PDP Bill to the Lok Sabha shortly, with recommended changes to the last version of the PDP Bill.

The Committee is now inviting comments and suggestions from the public on the PDP Bill, over a period of 3 weeks. As per media reports¹, the said consultation period will commence only after official notice is published in newspapers across the country, which is expected this week.

This may be the last opportunity for stakeholders to provide their suggestions and comments to the Committee on the new privacy and personal data protection framework proposed for India, and engagement in the consultative process is encouraged!

For reference: our detailed analysis of the PDP Bill is available here. The recording of our global webinars is available here.