Summary of the Comments on the Petitions filed at Supreme Court on DPDPA

The entire set of articles that we have discussed in the last fortnight on the DPDPA Challenge petitions in the Suprmene Court are available here.

No	Date	Title
1	Feb 16	DPDPA at the doors of Supreme Court
2	17	Supreme Court refers the DPDPA Challenge to a larger Bench
3	18	The DPDPA Challenge in Supreme Court
4	24	FDPPI would like to facilitate DPDPA petitions in Supreme Court to be cleared at the earliest
5	27	Petitions against DPDPA are “Disproportionate”, Disproportionate” and “Disproportionate”
6	28	Whose Privacy are the Petitioners of DPDPA Challenge Brigade are protecting?
7	28	Public Interest Litigation cannot be discussed without the real public having been given an opportunity to represent
8	28	Nothing is wrong with Section 17(1)(c) and 17(2)
9	March 2	Reporter’s Collective Trust prayer that DPDPA should be scrapped is manifestly arbitrary.
10	2	Are the “Scrap DPDPA Brigade” suggesting introduction of Registration of journalists by Government of India?
11	2	DPDPA and Conformance to Puttaswamy Judgement
12	3	A Review of 10 years of GDPR and it’s impact on India
13	3	DPDPA Exemptions : Don’t Judge by what DPDPA does not do
14	4	Will Supreme Court Scrap DPDPA?
15	5	How the Reporter’s Collective is trying to fool the Supreme Court
16	5	Reporter’s Collective petition. Creative but sinister

These discussions cover the two petitions of Venkatesh Nayak and Reporters Collective Trust. We did not have a copy of the third petition filed by NCPI. The points raised in that petition may not be different and if we get the copy of the petition, we will study that also and present the details.

The objective of these articles is not to criticise learned cousels who are representing the case though we may be using some aggressive statements as part of the presentation.

We however make a specific request to the Supreme Court that in all PIL petitions of this nature an opportunity should be given to the general public to submit their views like what the Supreme Court recently did in the case of Digital Arrest related petitions where an Amicus was appointed to collect the information from the public. This should be a standard practice.

We are specially irked by the fact that instead of restricting the prayers to resolve specific concerns the petitioners were asking for “Stay” and “Scrapping of the Act”. This was unwarranted and lacked responsibility.

India has been waiting for a legislation of this type for a long time and when finally it was in place, trying to scuttle it was not considered a good idea. Hence we had to strongly intervene and put across our views.

We now have placed these views in the public and feel that the Court is obliged to consider this opinion besides what the Government may present. Court should atleast ask the Attorney General whether they have gone through these views.

We have directly kept the Ministry of Information Technology informed about these views and hence it is their responsiblity to bring them to the attention of the Court. In the past (eg: Section 66A case) MeitY did not present their case properly and let the section be scrapped. It should not happen this time.

There is no reason to make any changes including in Section 44(3). We have given some suggestions on how the concerns can be addressed and are ready to share more details of how the Data Fiduciaries need to address these issues.

The MeitY, the Attroney General and the Supreme Court should have an open mind to receive these suggestions and not stand on formalities.

Naavi and FDPPI will continue to take actions required to protect DPDPA and will present more analysis as and when required.

On March 7, FDPPI will conduct a virtual Round Table on the topic, All are welcome. The link to the session is Link to the virtual session is available below

Link

Meeting Id: Zoom: 857 9546 4234

Passcode:dpdpa1