The Ministry of Electronics and IT has extended the last date for receiving public comments on the draft digital personal data protection bill till January 2, 2023, an official notice said. The earlier deadline for people to give comments on the draft bill was December 17.

“Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has published ‘Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2022’…In response to the requests received from several stakeholders, the ministry has decided to extend the last date for receipt of comments till 2nd January 2023,” the notice said.

Under the proposed DPDP (Digital Personal Data Protection) 2022 bill, The government has raised the penalty amount up to Rs 500 crore for violating provisions.

The draft personal data protection bill, issued in 2019, had also proposed a penalty of Rs 15 crore or 4 per cent of the global turnover of an entity.

The draft DPDP has proposed an exemption only for government-notified data fiduciaries and data processing entities when it comes to data collection, data sharing, and giving information around data processing.

Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar had said the government will not be able to violate the privacy of citizens under the proposed law as it will get access to personal data only in exceptional circumstances like in cases of national security, pandemic and natural disasters.

The minister has said the bill does not exempt government or related entities in case of data breach.

The government is mulling exempting early-stage startups from complying with norms under the proposed bill.

The exemption may be for a limited period to assist startups in developing their business models and to ensure that innovation is not stifled due to compliance burden.