B.N. Srikrishna panel to make draft data protection laws public be July
1 min read 19 Jun 2018, 04:07 AM ISTThe B.N. Srikrishna panel on framing India's data protection laws is expected to meet a few more times to finalize its recommendations before submitting its final report to the IT ministry
Premium
New Delhi: The draft data protection framework is expected to be made public only by July as the expert group headed by former Supreme Court judge B.N. Srikrishna that is working on the report requires more time to finalize its recommendations.
The report was earlier expected to be submitted by May.
The committee is expected to meet a few more times to finalize its recommendations before submitting its final report to the information technology (IT) ministry, said a person aware of the development, requesting anonymity.
Also read: A former SC judge has Facebook, Google, Amazon more than a little nervous
Difference of opinion among the members of the committee over storage of data by global companies and the consent framework finalized by the panel has delayed the submission of the report, said the person.
The expert committee is still working on the report and it has not yet been submitted for his consideration, IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad told reporters on Monday at a press conference on the achievements of the ministry in the last two years.
On 31 July, the government constituted a 10-member committee of experts headed by Justice Srikrishna to study various issues relating to data protection and make specific suggestions on the principles to be considered for data protection as well as suggest a draft Data Protection bill.
A white paper drafted by the committee of experts on data protection framework was released by the ministry of electronics and information technology on 27 November. It sought “to designate certain lawful grounds under which data can be processed, even in the absence of consent".
The report of the committee based on this white paper is likely to recommend that Internet companies such as Google and Facebook store data of Indians within the country, but with riders that may restrict the mandate to sensitive personal information, said a media report.
A similar mandate has already been issued by the Reserve Bank of India in April asking all payment companies to set up data storage facilities inside India by October this year.
