Data protection Bill Draft undermines RTI Act: Sandeep Pandey

Data protection Bill Draft undermines RTI Act: Sandeep Pandey

 Dated 04th September 2018.

Article published in The New Indian express :

'Another amendment proposed implies the government has little obligation to share information relating to personal data which may ‘cause harm to a data principle’.

VIJAYAWADA: The recently drafted Personal Data Protection Bill is said to contain provisions that ‘undermine’ the Right to Information (RTI) Act, speakers said at a workshop, which was conducted by the United Forum for Right to Information (UFRTI) in Vijayawada on Monday. It was attended by social activist and Ramon Magsaysay awardee Sandeep Pandey, founding member of Samachara Hakku Prachara Aikya Vedika Putta Surendra Babu and founding member of UFRTI Ramakrishna Raju.

The luminaries at the workshop spoke about how the Data Protection Act sought to rephrase certain provisions in the RTI Act, ‘reducing the scope of the law’ and, thereby, ‘restricting public access to information’. “The data protection Bill has proposed replacing the word ‘information’ with ‘data’ in Section 8 (1)(j) of Right to Information Act. If the amendment is implemented, the provision will read as if the government has no obligation to give citizens information related to personal data. This consequently minimises the extent of information accessible by the public,” Pandey said. 

The Bill defines data as ‘data about or relating to a natural person who is directly or indirectly identifiable’, which could be used as an excuse to shield information related to any officials within the government, speakers at the event said.  

Another amendment proposed implies the government has little obligation to share information relating to personal data which may ‘cause harm to a data principle’. This will allow the public information officer to use ‘only a theoretical possibility of harm instead of having to prove the same’ as the term harm has a wide range of meanings defined under the data protection Bill. 

Pandey and other members from UFRTI cited examples of officials not sharing information with the petitioners and how they were ‘mistreated’. They pointed out how the 10-member Srikrishna Committee--comprising experts from UIDAI, Ministry of Electronics and Information, Department of Telecom and other experts from various related fields--was constituted, which submitted its report on the Bill to the Union government on July 31, 2018 that was not only ‘biased’, but also ‘violated’ the law.

Ads by Kiosked