JPC considers relaxations for social media firms in data law

The joint parliamentary committee, led by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP PP Chaudhary, is considering introducing amendments to the country’s first Personal Data Protection Bill to reduce penalties against defaulting social media companies and remove the provision treating them as publishers, people familiar with the matter said.

“It seems that big tech has managed to garner support to relax some of the provisions of the data protection law,” a person familiar with the matter said. “Clauses from section 28 that proposed to treat social media companies as publishers in case they altered content have been proposed to be removed. Moreover, clauses that dealt with the civil penalties to be imposed upon the social media companies have been reduced from 4%, which is the bar for EU GDPR,” the person added.

The draft Personal Data Protection law was referred to a JPC to iron out several contentious issues in 2019. A previous draft was scheduled to be circulated among the members earlier this year but was abandoned when the then head, Meenakshi Lekhi, was replaced by Chaudhary.