India gets public feedback to finetune digital personal data protection draft rules

The Indian government has announced that it received 6,915 comments from members of the public as well as stakeholders as it works to finalize the country’s Digital Personal Data Protection Rules 2025.

The draft rules, once approved, will make the Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDPA) operational. India put in place the legislation through presidential assent in 2023, but it has not been fully operationalized. A webinar in 2021 had proposed how the legislation should be operationalized.

In total, the government says it received the inputs after the proposed rules were published for consultation early this year.

Efforts to put in place rules that will activate the country’s data protection legislation, according to the government, are aimed at “ensuring a safe, trusted, and accountable cyberspace for all users.”

The government also outlines activities and actions which it has carried out in line with its IT strategy. These include trainings on digital security including 3,637 workshops, public awareness campaigns, and the dissemination of relevant educational resources.

Other measures, as explained by the government, include the putting in place of various structures and institutional coordination personnel to effectively handle issues related to national cybersecurity.

The government states that the data protection Act is a “a comprehensive data privacy law to regulate the processing of digital personal data,” and it “balances the rights of individuals to protect their personal data with the need for lawful data processing.”

As explained in January, the government said the draft data protection rules, which were drafted following an inclusive and consultative process, “are designed to empower citizens in a rapidly growing digital economy” and they “seek to protect citizens’ rights in accordance with the DPDP Act, while achieving the right balance between regulation and innovation, so that the benefits of India’s growing innovation ecosystem are available to all citizens and India’s digital economy.”

The rules’ key provisions address issues around informed consent, user rights, parental controls.

The government has promised to carry out a series of awareness campaigns in order to educate citizens on their rights and responsibilities under the new legal framework. Some experts have found flaws in the Act on issues related to parental control and age verification.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  data privacy  |  data protection  |  digital identity  |  Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act  |  India  |  legislation