LS refers 'privacy bill' to joint panel of Parliament amid oppn protests

New Delhi: Amid opposition's claims that it breached personal privacy, the Lok Sabha on Wednesday referred the Personal Data Protection Bill to a joint select committee.

Communication and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, while moving a resolution in the House, said the bill may be referred to a joint committee of the House.

The resolution was passed by voice vote.

The panel will have 20 members from the Lok Sabha and 10 from the Rajya Sabha. The Upper House will give names of the members it wants to send to the panel.

Reading out names, he said, the panel would consist of Meenakashi Lekhi, S S Ahluwalia, P P Chaudhary, Sanjay Jaiswal, Rajyavardhan Rathore, Kirit Solanki, Heena Gavit, Tejasvi Surya, Rajiv Rajan Singh, Arvind Dharmapuri and Ajay Bhatt.

The panel would also comprise Gaurav Gogoi, S Jothimani, P V Mithun Reddy, Srikant Shinde, B Mehtab, K Kanimozhi, Ritesh Pandey and Saugata Roy, he said.

He also said Rajya Sabha can recommend members to the committee and the speaker will recommend one member to be its chairman.

The panel is expected to give its report before the end of the Budget Session which usually begins in the last week of January.

TMC leader of House Sudip Bandyopadhyay requested the speaker to replace Saugata Roy with Mahua Moitra as Roy is busy with work of the party.

The speaker asked the parliamentary affairs minister to discuss the issue.

However, Prasad said that a decision can be taken by the speaker after the member's resignation as there is a procedure which is followed for creation of any parliamentary committee.

Some of the opposition members demanded that the bill be circulated in public for wider consultation.

Opposition parties such as the Congress and the Trinamool Congress (TMC) attacked the government in the Lok Sabha for a growing "snooping industry" under its watch and alleged that the bill violated the Constitution.

Earlier in the day, opposition parties walked out in protest as the House, where the ruling BJP-led NDA has a massive majority, allowed the minister to introduce the bill amidst protest.

Before its introduction, opposition members Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury of the Congress and Saugata Roy and Mohua Moitra of the TMC spoke against the bill, demanding that it be examined by a standing committee.

Chowdhury said a "snooping industry" had grown and Prasad's ministry was "riddled with suspicions" about its conduct.

Roy said people's privacy was breached, referring to the row over the use of Israeli software Pegasus to spy on WhatsApp communication of some people.

There was no necessity for the bill which, he said, would add one more layer of bureaucracy when the existing laws could deal with the matter.

Questioning the bill, they also cited a Supreme Court judgment that said privacy was a fundamental right.

Prasad launched a strong defence of the bill, asserting that it had the apex court's mandate as the Supreme Court had underlined the need for a data protection law.

The bill was aimed at safeguarding people's rights and privacy, he said.

Privacy was a fundamental right but terrorists or the corrupt enjoyed no such right, Prasad said, citing the court's order.

The proposed law was prepared on the recommendations of the Justice Srikrishna Committee which, he said, had engaged in the "widest consultation".

The minister said the proposed law sought to divide people's data into three categories.

The bill seeks a bar on storing and processing of personal data by entities without the explicit consent of an individual.

It, however, provides for exemptions for "reasonable purposes" such as "prevention and detection of any unlawful activity including fraud, whistleblowing, merger and acquisitions, network and information security, credit scoring, recovery of debt, processing of publicly available personal data and the operation of search engines".

The legislation provides for stringent ground rules for processing of personal and sensitive information of children, while mandating the processing of "critical" personal data only in India.