JPC on personal data protection Bill gets further extension till Winter session of Parliament

NEW DELHI: Less than two weeks after Speaker Om Birla said there will be no extension of time granted to the Joint Committee of Parliament on the Personal Data Protection Bill to submit its report, Lok Sabha on Friday passed a motion for yet another extension to the JPC, this time allowing it to submit its report by the first week of the Winter session of Parliament.
The JCP was constituted in December 2019 to review the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019, which seeks to regulate the use of individual's data by the government and private companies. This is the third extension granted to it.
Earlier this month, 5 of the 30-member JPC, including its chairperson Meenakshi Lekhi, were elevated as ministers following the cabinet reshuffle. While Birla nominated BJP MP PP Chaudhary as the committee’s new chairman in place of Lekhi on Friday, six other vacancies remain to be filled.
Lok Sabha sources confirmed that a draft of the committee’s report has already been sent to the Speaker’s office. However, this triggered some outrage among member MPs.
“How can @M_Lekhi claim Personal Data Protection Bill (PDP) Bill report has been submitted to Speaker @ombirlakota when report has not been circulated to members much less adopted. Either misreporting or @M_Lekhi must clarify. @ombirlakota please note,” former Union minister Manish Tewari said.
Rajya Sabha MP Jairam Ramesh also chimed in. “I am amazed. Apart from her 3 members of Committee have become Ministers and they too had been asking for the draft report to be circulated before adoption. Now of course they will be silent,” he said.
Ramesh later asserted the “urgent need” for a Personal Data Protection law and said it is “heightened by the current Pegasus scandal”.
Speaking to TOI, former secretary general of Lok Sabha, PDT Achary said, “The sharing of the draft with the Speaker’s office may have been an informal arrangement since there is no sanction for this under the Rules.” Achary also said the JPC, formed by a Resolution of both Houses, operates autonomously and typically, a draft of the report is circulated to JPC members, who adopt its recommendations, following which the report is tabled in the House, if Parliament is in session, or then submitted to the Speaker for tabling in Parliament when it meets.