Data Protection Bill Controversy Widens: Congress MP, JPC Member says Classified ‘as Money Bill’

Data Protection Bill has been ridden with controversies from the start. Now, if introduced as a money bill, it would only raise suspicions globally and hit credibility.

New Delhi: The Digital Personal Data Protection Bill is set to be brought to Parliament, classified as a Financial Bill, according to Lok Sabha MP Manish Tewari.

Tewari tweeted this in the morning, citing a circular which read: the President (Draupadi Murmu), has recommended the introduction of the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Bill, under Article 117(1) of the Constitution and consideration under Article 117 (3).

Article 117 deals with details of financial bills.

Tewari asked, “How Did the Digital Data Protection Bill get classified as a Financial Bill suddenly?”

He demanded that “It needs to be considered as a regular bill and go to a JPC again.”

Congress MP Tewari was a member of the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) that studied that Personal Data Protection (PDP) Bill.

Some media reports quoted “government sources” as saying that the bill would be taken up like a normal bill and not a money bill. However, Tewari stood his ground and said it appeared that the government was trying to bypass the Rajya Sabha.

Modi govt’s Money bills

The matter of the Modi government declaring bills it deems a challenge to clear Rajya Sabha, where it does not have the numbers on its own as in the Lok Sabha, has been a controversial matter for long.

As lawyer Gautam Bhatia pointed out, with the Supreme Court yet to rule on a long-pending matter regarding the validity of the Union government classifying many regular bills as ‘money bills’ to evade scrutiny and difficult questions, the “impunity” continues.

“This issue of the Speaker misclassifying a bill as a money bill first came up in the Aadhaar litigation, and was then referred to a seven-judge bench of the SC a little later. Five years on, and there’s still no judgment – which allows this impunity to keep going,” said Bhatia.

“What is the basis for this? As if ignoring years of concerns wasn’t bad enough, we are now potentially facing the possibility of schadenfreude to pass a deficient bill,” Prateek Waghre, policy director at Internet Freedom Foundation is cited by Moneycontrol.com as asking.

This controversy on this long due Data Protection bill is only the latest to dog the matter. It has been debated and strongly criticised for not addressing issues it was meant to do and creating a whole host of new issues.

The Wire has reported on the Opposition INDIA challenging the government on procedure on this bill. On Monday, July 31, CPI(M) MP John Brittas accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of “trampling” on parliamentary rules and regulations.

“The ruling party has no hesitation to trample on the rules and regulations,” he had said.

Opposition MPs have alleged that the government is bypassing parliamentary procedure.

Parliamentary procedure entails that once a Bill is approved by the cabinet, it is tabled in parliament. Parliamentary rules also lay down that a Bill can only be sent to a standing committee after it has been introduced in either house of parliament.

Opposition MPs who are members of the Department Related Parliamentary Standing Committee on Communications and Information Technology told The Wire that the committee on July 26 adopted a report titled as ‘Citizen’s data security and privacy’ which contains a report on the examination and recommendations of the committee on the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill.

At least two MPs who were at the meeting said that they walked out of it, as the report was adopted in violation of parliamentary procedure, as the Bill had not been introduced in parliament in either house of parliament.

Activists have also raised concerns about the bill endangering the RTI Act.