At a meeting of the Joint Committee on the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019, members from both opposition and BJP opposed certain sections of the legislation that can be invoked to exempt government agencies, such as the National Investigation Agency (NIA), from the provisions of the law.

According to the sources, the Ministry of Home Affairs made a presentation on Monday to the committee explaining that agencies including the NIA, National Crime Record Bureau, Narcotics Control Bureau and the Registrar of General of India should be exempt from the provisions of the data protection law under Section 35 and Section 36 of the law.

Of civil liberties

It is learnt that BJP MPs S.S. Ahluwalia and P.P. Chaudhary among others, BJD MP B. Mahtab, Congress MPs Manish Tewari and Gaurav Gogoi, among others opposed the provisions, saying that these are in violation of civil liberties of an individual.

The Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019 was introduced in Lok Sabha by Minister of Electronics and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad on December 11, 2019. It seeks to provide for protection of personal data of individuals, and establishes a Data Protection Authority for the same. The data can be anything from traits or attributes of identity, financial or biometric data, caste, religion or even political beliefs.

Section 35 of the law says that “in the interest of sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States, public order” all or any provisions of this act shall not apply to any agency of the government.

And as per Section 36 of the law the “safeguards for an individual can also be suspended in the interests of prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of any offence or any other contravention of any law for the time being in force.”

The members, sources said, demanded that both these clauses of the law need to be revisited. They also argued that the government does not have a clear justification for seeking these exemptions.

“This law flows out of a Supreme Court judgement which upheld privacy as a fundamental right. These clauses allow the state instruments to remove safeguards provided to an individual, thus completely diluting the essence of the law,” one of the members said, calling it a direct assault on civil liberties.

Since the law only mentions any government agency, the exemptions could practically be extended to any government body, another member said.

In August 2017, the Supreme Court held that privacy is a fundamental right, flowing from the right to life and personal liberty under Article 21 of the Constitution. The Court also observed that privacy of personal data and facts is an essential aspect of the right to privacy.