The government may abandon its proposal to establish a centralised data protection authority (DPA) in the new privacy bill it is drafting. The concept of DPA was proposed in the Personal Data Protection Bill, which the government withdrawn earlier this month after receiving widespread criticism from privacy advocates and technology companies.
The government intends to replace the DPA with a grievance redressal mechanism for aggrieved individuals, according to the Hindustan Times. “A lot of the functions that were assigned to DPA were outside of its remit; the collection, storage, and sharing of personal data will either be worked into the law itself or be included in the rules that will be made under the law,” an official was quoted as saying in the report. According to the official, the government does not want to overburden a single authority and raise compliance costs for small businesses.
