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Consent
The draft DPDP rules which moot parents' verifiable consent to create a child's user account on social media platforms, and adds localisation requirement for certain types of personal data has significant ramifications for big tech firms, experts say noting that businesses may also face "complex challenges" in managing consent which is core to data protection norms. According to Deloitte India, maintaining consent artefacts and offering the option to withdraw consent for specific purposes would necessitate changes at design and architecture level of applications and platforms. The comment comes against the backdrop of government releasing the long-awaited draft of Digital Personal Data Protection Rules which proposes to make parent's verifiable consent and identification mandatory for creation of child's user account on online or social media platforms, and also moots possible data localisation requirements for specified personal data. The provision related to localisation and ...
The Economic Survey on Monday flagged a rise in mental health issues among Indians, calling for a paradigm shift towards a bottom-up, whole-of-community approach to address the problem. Paying attention to mental health in society is both a health and an economic imperative, the policy document asserted while dwelling on the topic in a vast and detailed manner for the first time highlighting the various socio-economic repercussions of the issue. Mental health drags down productivity more widely in the ecosystem than individuals' physical health issues, it noted. Quoting the National Mental Health Survey (NMHS) 2015-16 data, the survey said 10.6 per cent of adults suffered from mental disorders in India while the treatment gap for mental disorders ranged between 70 to 92 per cent for different disorders. Further, as per the NMHS, the prevalence of mental morbidity was higher in urban metro regions (13.5 per cent) as compared to rural areas (6.9 per cent) and urban non-metro areas (4
The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act was enacted not to punish minors in a consensual relationship and to brand them as criminals, the Bombay High Court has said while granting bail to a 23-year-old man who was booked on the charge of raping a minor. A single bench of Justice Anuja Prabhudessai in the order passed on April 26 noted that it was true that the victim in the case was a minor, but her statement prima facie indicates that the relationship was consensual. "It needs to be noted that the POCSO Act has been enacted to protect children from offences of sexual assault, sexual harassment, etc, and contains stringent penal provisions as to safeguard the interest and the well-being of the children," the HC said. "The object is certainly not to punish minors in romantic or consensual relationship and brand them as criminals," it added. The court was hearing a plea filed by one Imran Shaikh, who was booked by the Mumbai police for allegedly kidnapping and ...
Government has no plans to reduce the age of consent for consensual relationships, the Rajya Sabha was informed on Wednesday. In a written reply to a question whether the government is considering changing the age of consent for consensual relationships to 16 years from the present 18 years, Women and Child Development Minister Smriti Irani said the question "does not arise". The minister said the Protection of Children from Sexual Offenses (POCSO) Act, 2012 enacted to safeguard children from sexual abuse and sexual offences clearly defines a child as any person below the age of 18 years. The Act was further amended in 2019 to introduce more stringent punishment, including death penalty for committing sexual crimes on children, with a view to deter the perpetrators and prevent such crimes against children. "In case of commission of offence by child, Section 34 under POCSO Act already provides procedure in case of commission of offence by child and determination of age by Special ..