JOIN USThe Supreme Court, which has reserved its judgement its hearing on the validity of Aadhaar, has emphasised the need to put in place a robust data protection regime, with an aim to maintain a balance between individual interests and legitimate state concerns.
“Informational privacy is a facet of the right to privacy. The dangers to privacy in an age of information can originate not only from the state but from non-state actors as well,” a nine-judge bench had said, in its landmark verdict, upholding the right to privacy as a fundamental right.
The court had then asked the Union government the need to examine and put into place a robust regime for data protection.
“The creation of such a regime requires a careful and sensitive balance between individual interests and legitimate concerns of the state. The legitimate aims of the state would include for instance protecting national security, preventing and investigating crime, encouraging innovation and the spread of knowledge, and preventing the dissipation of social welfare benefits,” the court had then said.
As the government had then informed that it has constituted a committee chaired by Justice B N Srikrishna, former Judge of the Supreme Court, the court had said these matters of policy are to be considered by the Union government while designing a carefully structured regime for the protection of the data.
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology had on July 31, 2017, set up the committee of experts to deliberate on a data protection framework, which had submitted its report on Friday, containing a draft law 'The Personal Data Protection Bill 2018'.
“The impact of the digital age results in information on the internet being permanent. Humans forget, but the internet does not forget and does not let humans forget. Any endeavour to remove information from the internet does not result in its absolute obliteration. The foot prints remain. It is thus, said that in the digital world preservation is the norm and forgetting a struggle,” the court had said.