The government on Wednesday withdrew controversial data protection and privacy Bill, which was first proposed in 2019 and had alarmed big technology companies, such as Facebook and Google. The government said that it was working on a new comprehensive law. The 2019 law had proposed stringent regulations on cross-border data flows and proposed giving the government powers to seek user data from companies. This was seen as a part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s stricter regulation of tech giants. 

A government notice said today that the decision came as a Parliamentary panel’s review of the 2019 Bill had suggested many amendments, leading to the need for a new “comprehensive legal framework”. The government will now “present a new Bill,” the notice added. India’s junior IT Minister of State Rajeev Chandrasekhar said on Twitter that the new planned framework would adhere to global standards, adding that privacy was a fundamental right of Indian citizens and that the economy required such cyber laws. 

The 2019 privacy Bill was designed to protect Indian citizens and establish a so-called data protection authority. But it had raised concerns among Big Tech giants that it could increase their compliance burden and data storage requirements. “It is good that there will be a redraft from scratch,” said Prasanto Roy, a New Delhi-based consultant who closely tracks India’s technology policy. 

“However, India still has no privacy law in sight. That’s leaving data regulation open to a wide variety of sectoral regulations, something a common privacy law could have harmonised,” he added.