The Lok Sabha on Monday passed the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill by a voice vote amid sloganeering by the Opposition, which demanded a discussion on the ethnic violence in Manipur.

This will be India’s first law on data privacy and comes six years after the Supreme Court had unanimously declared the right to privacy a fundamental right of all Indians.

“It would have been good had the Opposition discussed the bill today [in the House],” Electronics and Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said. “But no Opposition leader or member is concerned over the rights of the citizens.”

The Bharatiya Janata Party government has said that the bill will safeguard the personal data of citizens and allow “the innovation economy” to expand. It lays down rules for the collection, processing, storage, transfer and deletion of personal data by government agencies and private companies as well as data processors like cloud service providers or analytics firms.

The bill also requires data fiduciaries to obtain consent for processing a citizen’s personal data as a matter of routine and grants the individual the right to access, correct, erase, port, and restrict their data. It proposes a penalty of up to Rs 250 crore on entities for misusing or failing to protect digital data of individuals.

The bill, however, permits the government “lawful and legitimate access” to personal data during “national security and emergencies like pandemics and earthquakes”.

Opposition and civil society leaders have claimed that the proposed law could violate the right to privacy and enable the government to engage in mass surveillance and censorship.

“This Bill cleaves the entire digital universe into two parts,” Congress MP Manish Tewari had said last week when it was tabled in the Lok Sabha. “It will apply with full force to everyone outside government but exempt the entire government universe. Therefore, the fundamental right to privacy laid down by the Supreme Court in Puttaswamy stands assaulted by the provisions.”

On Sunday, the Editors Guild of India in a statement said that the bill enables a framework for surveillance of citizens, including journalists and their sources.

Under Section 36 of the bill, the government can ask any public or private entity to furnish personal information of citizens. This can have an adverse impact on press freedom, the Guild added.

The association urged Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla to send the bill to a Parliamentary committee for reconsideration.

Several activists and experts have also expressed concern, saying that the bill will dilute the Right to Information provisions.

They said the bill expands the scope of what constitutes “private information” and therefore ensures that public officials may conceal information about their activities by claiming that these are “private matters”.

Also read: How Modi government is using data privacy as an excuse to cripple the Right to Information