'Excessive Centralisation of Power': Lawyers, Activists, Journalists, MPs Express Fear Over DPDP Act

The Wire

30-07-2025

Law
The organisers said that if the DPDP Act is enacted in its current form, activists, journalists, lawyers, political parties and organisations 'will become 'data fiduciaries' under the law'.
New Delhi: A group of representatives from social movements, campaigns, civil society organisations, and including senior lawyers, retired judges, journalists, media and parliamentarians met for a day-long consultation on the implications of the controversial Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, 2023.
The meeting was organised by the Roll Back RTI Amendments Campaign (comprising the National Campaign for Peoples' Right to Information (NCPRI) and 30+ campaigns and groups) and Campaign for Judicial Accountability and Reforms (CJAR).
The DPDP Act, the draft rules of which were notified in January this year, could curtail the freedom of the press and people's right to information, many have said, as it vests excessive powers in the Union government.
Last week, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology told the parliament that The draft rules received 6,915 inputs and comments from the public, firms and other stakeholders, Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) MP Vaddiraju Ravichandra.
In a press release, the organisers expressed that the DPDP Act can have a chilling impact on activists, journalists, lawyers, political parties, groups and organisations 'who collect, analyse and disseminate critical information as they will become 'data fiduciaries' under the law'.
'The excessive centralisation of power in the central government, including the constitution of a government-controlled Data Protection Board with powers to levy penalties of up to 250 crore (which can be doubled up to Rs. 500 crore), raises concerns about the weaponisation of this law against those seeking accountability,' they said.
The meeting was attended by Justice Madan Lokur, Justice Rekha Sharma, senior lawyers and advocates CU Singh, Prashanto Sen, Prashant Bhushan, Huzefa Ahmadi, Trideep Pais, Nitya Ramakrishnan, Nizam Pasha, Ritwick Dutta, Sarim Naved, Gautam Bhatia, Apar Gupta, Suroor Mander, Soutik Banerjee, Cheryl D'Souza and Shahrukh Alam.
Also read: Media Under Attack: India's New Data Protection Law
Senior journalists, the President of the Editor's Guild of India and the President and Vice-President of the Press Club of India also spoke of its impact on media and investigative reporting, while MPs including V. Sivadasm (CPIM), Raja Ram Singh (CPIML) and Rajkumar Raut (BAP) also joined the session.
Representatives of various campaigns and social movements including the Right to Food Campaign, the National Campaign for Dalit Human Rights, National Federation of Indian Women, Right to Education Campaign, talked about the challenges posed by the DPDP Act and how it will prevent public monitoring and scrutiny.
RTI Activists including Anjali Bhardwaj, Nikhil Dey, Commodore Lokesh Batra, Jayaram, Bhaskar Prabhu, Praveer Peter, Amrita Johri and Rakshita Swamy flagged the severe dilution of the RTI Act through the DPDP Act. Economist Jayati Ghosh, former IAS officers and members of the Constitutional Conduct Group and Yashovardhan Azad, former Information Commissioner, CIC also attended the meeting.
There was consensus that the DPDP Act, in its current form, is extremely problematic and the press release also stated that 'using the smoke screen of privacy and data protection, the government is diluting crucial rights'.
Journalist bodies including the Editor's Guild of India and Press Club of India have earlier expressed fear that this law could end exposed corruption and silence whistleblowers, fundamentally altering India's media landscape.
The issue also comes up as another significant threat has emerged regarding the weakening of the Right to Information (RTI) Act, due to an amendment brought through Section 44(3) of the DPDP Act, 2023.
Section 44(3) of the DPDP Act amends the Section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act by allowing government bodies to simply withhold 'personal information' without the safeguard provisions on public interest or other such exceptions.
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