Exclusive | COWIN and Aadhaar will remain accountable under new law: Ashwini Vaishnaw on Data Protection Bill

"One good thing about our bill is it is not prescriptive. If it is prescriptive, then what happens is — as the technology changes, law will generally not be able to catch up with it first. Second, the compliance burden for the citizens as well as the industry will become very high. So we have kept it principles-based," the Electronics and Information Technology minister explained.

He added the government is absolutely equally accountable. "The carve outs, the exemptions are very specific. They are as per the constitutional mandate. There is nothing which basically differentiates the government data fiduciaries," he said.

Minister Vaishnaw further underscored that the autonomy of the Data Protection Board has been formally established and enshrined within the framework of the new legislation.

Comparing the India's Data Protection Bill with Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), he said the latter has far more exemptions than the Indian law. "The Bill has carefully curate very narrow exemptions," he said.

The Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2023, was passed by the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday (August 9), making steady progress towards becoming law. Following its approval in the Lok Sabha on August 7, the bill seeks to establish a robust framework for the protection of personal data in the digital realm. The Bill aims to ensure that data collection, sharing, and storage practices adhere to strict standards, keeping individuals' privacy intact.