Draft bill provisions may impact RTI Act

NEWDELHI: Provisions in the landmark draft bill on data protection submitted by the justice BN Srikrishna committee to the government on Friday could have an impact on some other key laws, including the Right To Information (RTI) Act.

“... disclosure of information from public authorities may lead to private harms being caused. It is thus important to recognise that, in this context, there is a conflict of fundamental rights, between transparency and privacy,” the committee’s report says.

The draft Personal Data Protection Bill, 2018 seeks to amend the RTI Act’s Section 8(1)(j), which states that personal information that doesn’t serve “public activity or interest” cannot be disclosed unless it is deemed to be of public interest. In other words, personal information can be sought under RTI if it is found to serve a public cause.

Activists say such a provision can be cited to deny public information. Anjali Bharadwaj, a co-convener of the National Campaign for People’s Right to Information, said: “With the kind of rampant corruption, people are unable to avail basic entitlements. Now somebody might say this is personal data, and refuse to share it. ... this Bill could have a very retrograde effect.”

Former chief information commissioner MM Ansari said the amendment suggested by the Srikrishna committee is inconsequential, as the present RTI Act already protects personal information. “Under the RTI Act, personal information and data are already protected. The disclosure of any information which has no public interest and which has no bearing on any public activity is not allowed,” said Ansari. NEW DELHI: The Justice BN Srikrishna committee has stated that regulations suggested in the draft data protection bill will require the government to make changes to the Aadhaar Act.

The report said it would not comment on the merits of an ongoing case in the Supreme Court related to Aadhaar’s implementation. “However, it is salient that the data protection regime proposed by the committee will require close introspection by the government on various aspects pertaining to the existing functioni- ng of the UIDAI,” the report said. The UIDAI or Unique Idcentification Authority of India, is the nodal agency that manages the Aadhaar biometric identification system.

The committee has recommended two changes to the Aadhaar Act. The report states “amendments have been suggested that classify requesting entities into two kinds to regulate access to personal data on the basis of necessity — those who can request for authentication and those who are limited to verifying the identity of individuals offline.” In other words, the committee wants better safeguarding of Aadhaar data.

Secondly, the committee has said amendments are required to ensure the “autonomy of the UIDAI”.

This requires two conceptual changes, it said, to the way in which the Act currently conceives the UIDAI. “…first, the UIDAI must be autonomous in its decision-making, functioning independently of the user agencies, in the government and outside it, that make use of Aadhaar”.

Secondly, the committee said the UIDAI must be equipped with “powers akin to a traditional regulator for enforcement actions”.