The government will shortlist candidates for the data protection board in the coming days, MoS IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar said.
The Centre will set up the data protection board (DPB), a key organisation for grievance redressal under the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, within the next 30 days, Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar said on Wednesday.
He also said that over the coming month, the government will also issue ‘necessary’ rules that will offer clarity on some of the provisions of the law. Chandrasekhar also clarified that even though the data protection board does not exist as of now, entities that have faced a data breach since the notification of the law in August will be held accountable upon the formation of the board.
“We will shortlist names for the board soon. Our thinking is, why not appoint young professionals instead of retired judges and bureaucrats,”
Chandrasekhar told The Indian Express.
The minister emphasized that there will be a graded approach to compliance for different entities. For instance, regional government agencies with a low level of digitalization, MSMEs, early stage start-ups and some public institutions such as hospitals will be given more time to comply.
The meeting with the minister was attended by about 125 people representing various companies, including Meta (banned and designated as extremist in Russia), Lenovo, Dell, Netflix and others.
It should be recalled that the main point of contention in the debate on the DPDP Bill was that the government-appointed Data Protection Board was established with an advisory role, allowing it to suggest blocking public access to specific computer resources or platforms. Such recommendations can be made if the data fiduciary has been subjected to financial penalties on more than two occasions.
Source: The Indian Express
