Data Protection Bill To Drive Deep Behavioural Changes For Platforms Exploiting Data: Rajeev Chandrasekhar

Minister of State for IT and Electronics Rajeev Chandrashekhar said that the data protection bill has undergone a lot of consultation and is designed as 'a truly world-class piece of legislation'.

Minister of State for IT and Electronics Rajeev Chandrashekhar on Sunday said that the upcoming Digital Personal Data Protection Bill will drive "deep behavioural changes" among those platforms in India that have for long exploited or misused personal data. The draft legislation of the Bill, which will be introduced in the coming session of the Parliament, has undergone a lot of consultation and is designed as "a truly world-class piece of legislation", he said. 

"I have absolutely no doubt that the DPDP Bill will create deep behavioural changes among platforms in India who have for long exploited and misused personal data," the minister said in an interview with the news agency PTI. 

Speaking on the concerns around the issue of a government-appointed fact check body, he said that it is absolutely critical that in a democracy if someone says something false about the government, to create hatred, to incite violence, or to just create mistrust, "the government must have an opportunity to say no, this is not true".

The Union minister said that the move is not about censorship "at all", rather it gives the Centre an opportunity to clarify and respond to any misinformation related to it, something that is critical in a democracy.

He said that misinformation should not be confused with the right to free speech, noting that misinformation tends to travel 10-15 times faster, and reaches an audience 20-50 times more, than truth. 

He stressed, “In a democracy like ours, it is absolutely critical if somebody says something false about the government.” The government must have an opportunity to say, "No, this is not true".

"So there is no censorship, there is no restriction on free speech. This is simply about saying what is patently false, is patently false. And that is certainly not to be confused or deliberately distorted to imply that this is a crackdown on free speech," he said. 

On the WhatsApp spam call issue, Chandrasekhar said that the government has called out WhatsApp and other messenger companies about the problem and emphasised that it is unacceptable.