Data Protection Bill should be considered as regular bill: Tewari

Congress leader Manish Tewari on Thursday asked how the Digital Data Protection Bill can be classified as a financial bill, and said it should be considered as a regular bill.

The bill should again go to a Joint Parliamentary Committee, he said.

The bill aims to make entities like internet companies, mobile apps, and business houses more accountable and answerable about collection, storage and processing of the data of citizens as part of Right to Privacy.

"How Did the Digital Data Protection Bill get classified as a Financial Bill suddenly," he asked.

"It needs to be considered as a regular bill and go to a JPC again," Tewari stressed.

"If this bill on passage is certified as a money bill by Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla which seems to be the intent of getting it classed as a Financial Bill then Rajya Sabha can not vote on it. It can only recommend non binding changes to Lok Sabha," he said on Twitter.

He shared a copy of the presidential order classifying the bill as a Money Bill.

"The latest iteration of this Bill mocks the efforts put in by the Joint Committee of Parliament on the Data Protection Bill led by two BJP members P P Chaudhary and Meenakshi Lekhi respectively," the Congress MP from Punjab said.

The work on the data protection bill started after the Supreme Court ruled that Right to Privacy is a fundamental right.

The government had in August last year withdrawn the personal data protection bill, which was first presented in late 2019, and issued a new version of the draft bill in November 2022.

The draft bill had earned criticism around the government getting power to exempt entities from various clauses of the bill.