• Nearly 21-months after the Personal Data Protection Bill was referred to a Joint Parliamentary Committee, sources said that work on the report will have to start afresh under the new chairman and BJP MP P.P. Chaudhary.In a meeting held on September 15, after a gap of more than nine-months, many members argued that the committee should not waste any more time and should finalise the draft report it had agreed on after a year long deliberations.
• The Personal Data Protection Bill was introduced in Lok Sabha in December 2019 and soon after referred to the Joint Parliamentary Committee which was then headed by BJP leader Meenakshi Lekhi. The committee got its fifth extension in the monsoon session in July this year and has now been asked to submit the report by the Winter Session of the Parliament that is expected to be called in the third week of November.
• The call for a data protection Bill in the country has been growing stronger amid growing threat of data breaches due to a sharp increase in cyber crimes. In May this year, two major firms Air India and Jubilant FoodWorks witnessed ‘security incidents’ that put consumer data at risk.

 WHAT IS DATA PROTECTION BILL :- 

• The Personal Data Protection Bill 2019 was tabled in the Indian Parliament by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology on 11 December 2019. As of March, 2020 the Bill is being analyzed by a Joint Parliamentary Committee in consultation with experts and stakeholders.
• The 2019 draft of the bill proposed the formation of a Data Protection Authority (DPA), which would regulate the use of users' personal data by social media companies and other organizations within the country. It is also expected to set data localization norms for companies that retain user data.