Govt will shorten data protection compliance timeline from 18 months, says Vaishnaw

THE GOVERNMENTIS in consultation with the industry to further shorten the compliance timeline — from the current 12 to 18 months — and will soon issue an amendment to that end, IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said Monday.

- SOUMYARENDRA BARIK

Vaishnaw, while responding to a question from The Indian Express on why the government had afforded Big Tech companies and startups the same compliance timeline, even though the former already have systems to adhere to international privacy laws, said, “That is something we are talking to the industry about. It is right that big companies already follow laws like Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). We will compress the timeline. We will amend the law”.

The Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) Friday notified the long awaited data protection rules, paving the way for India to have a functional privacy law, eight years after the Supreme Court ruled it as a fundamental right.The notification of the rules comes over two years after the Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDP Act) received the President’s assent in August 2023.