Opposition to data localisation may come down after international tax law: Official

NEW DELHI: Opposition to India’s data localisation move from overseas companies may go down once a globally accepted framework of taxing big technology and digital companies comes into place, a senior IT ministry official has said.

Gopalakrishnan S, joint secretary in the ministry of electronics and IT, told the India Mobile Congress on Wednesday that he was referring to a recent proposal by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to expand government rights to tax multinationals, especially big internet firms, by releasing a methodology for such taxation.

The official said that according to the draft personal data protection (PDP) bill, the law would only set up the framework regarding necessarily localising ‘critical data’ only in India without a copy of it being elsewhere.