Data Protection Bill referred to joint select panel following voice vote

Shashi Tharoor writes to LS speaker against move, says ruling party has shown brazen disregard for standing committee on IT

The Personal Data Protection Bill was introduced in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday, and referred to a Joint Select Committee following a voice vote. 

Introducing the Bill, Ravi Shankar Prasad, electronics and information technology minister, said, “Though a lot of discussion went into formulating the Bill, we want Parliament to discuss this too. Hence, we have decided that a Joint Select Committee (JSC) of both Houses of Parliament should look at it."

He was referring to the consultation process released last year after first draft of the Bill. Over 600 responses were received by the ministry on the Bill, but weren't made public.

According to parliamentary procedure, the Bill could also have been referred to the departmental committee, which in this case, would be the parlimentary standing committee on information technology, headed by Congress leader Shashi Tharoor.   

Tharoor had objected to Prasad's proposal of sending the Bill to the JSC, to which the telecom minister said the standing committee has a lot of work and that the JSC will only look at the Bill, and should finalise its report before the upcoming Budget session.

Later in the day, Tharoor wrote to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla to register "strong concerns" with Prasad's proposal to move the Bill to a JSC. He said the Committee on IT has a mandate and a parliamentary responsibility to examine all matters related to information technology, electronics, telecommunications, postal services, and allied services.  

"This includes all legislation on these matters and the Personal Data Protection Bill, which the Committee has been regularly asking for, should, therefore, have been directed to the Committee for a thorough and comprehensive examination. Instead, in a brazen disregard for the Committee, and by extension, the parliamentary convention relating to standing committees, this government has chosen to establish a JSC, presumably in order to extend its control by a chairman from the ruling party," Tharoor said in a tweet. 

Tharoor called it a "dangerous precedent since it would allow the government to bypass the designated standing committee in every instance where a contentious Bill is under consideration". 

A senior Congress leader involved in making floor strategy said, “The government has abused its brute majority, and is afraid of standing committees headed by Opposition leaders.” A legislation on data protection has been a long standing demand from the industry and lawmakers since the Supreme Court ruled privacy a fundamental right. After the first draft of the Bill was submitted under a committee chaired by Justice B N Srikrishna last year, there were objections raised by big and small businesses, especially on the broad restrictions on cross-border data flow. 

The final Bill, in its current form, relaxes some of the data localisation requirements, but includes other contentious issues like giving power to the Central government to decide to keep any government agency out of the purview of the Bill, the government being allowed to ask for non-personal data for policymaking, and additional verification burden on social media companies processing large amounts of personal data. 

"When a minister moves a Bill, the minister can also move a motion to refer the Bill to a committee. Previously this was done in the Insolvency Bill, GST legislation and so on," said Chakshu Roy, head of legislative and civic engagement, PRS Legislative Research. "The general principle for selection of a JSC is to have adequate representation from all political parties," he said. 

The proposed JSC will have 20 members from Lok Sabha, and 10 from the Rajya Sabha. The Lok Sabha members in the Committee include Tejasvi Surya, Meenakshi Lekhi, Kanimozhi,  Saugata Roy, and Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, among others.