SFLC.IN wrote to Ms. Meenakshi Lekhi, Chairperson, Joint Parliamentary Committee on Data Protection Bill urging her to have a wide and diverse stakeholder consultation process for the draft Data Protection Bill.

India is a participatory democracy and consultation processes of legislation as important as the Data Protection law must reflect views of all the stakeholders involved. While the Committee has invited social media intermediaries, fin-tech companies, travel aggregators for oral consultation, civil society organisations working for defending rights of citizens in the digital space have been left out of the consultation process.

Civil society organizations play an important role by advocating for rights of the people and acting as a medium of checking the encroachment on people’s rights. Through this letter, we sincerely hope that the Joint Parliamentary Committee, under your chairpersonship, will invite civil society organisations that defend rights of citizens in the digital space for consultation on the draft Data Protection Bill.

You can read our letter here: