Govt proposes penalty of up to Rs 500 cr for breaching data under Data Protection Bill

New Delhi: The government has raised the penalty amount to up to Rs 500 crore for violating the provisions proposed in the draft of the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill 2022. The bill was issued on Friday and is open to receiving comments from public till December 17. The draft also proposes to set up a Data Protection Board of India, which will carry out functions as per the provisions stated in the bill. Initially, the draft of the personal data protection bill in 2019 proposed a penalty of Rs 15 crore, which was four percent of the global turnover of an entity.

Graded penalty system introduced in draft of Data Protection Bill

The draft has proposed a graded penalty system for data fiduciary that will process the personal data only in accordance with the provisions of the Act. The same set of penalties will be applicable to the data processor. The data processor will be an entity that will focus on processing data on behalf of the data fiduciary. The draft proposes a penalty of up to Rs 250 crore in case the data fiduciary or data processor fails to protect against personal data breaches in its possession or under its control.

"If the Board determines at the conclusion of an inquiry that noncompliance by a person is significant, it may, after giving the person a reasonable opportunity of being heard, impose such a financial penalty as specified in Schedule 1, not exceeding rupees five hundred crore in each instance," the draft said.

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