New Delhi, Feb 18 The Delhi High Court on Wednesday sought the Centre's stand on a petition challenging certain provisions of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, for enabling surveillance and excessive control of the executive as well as undermining judicial independence.
A bench of Chief Justice D K Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Karia issued a notice to the Central government on the petition filed by Chandresh Jain, and listed it for hearing in April.
The petition claimed that sections 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 29, 30, 36, 37, 39, 40 and 44 of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDPA) and its rules enabled unchecked executive access to data, blocking without hearing, absence of meaningful consent, opaque exemptions, dilution of Right to Information Act, and executive-controlled data protection board and appellate tribunal.
The provisions, the plea added, “strike at the heart of human rights jurisprudence, constitutionally guaranteed freedoms, and the democratic promise of a free society”.
“The DPDP Act and DPDP Rules together enable broad state surveillance, long-term storage of personal and behavioural data, excessive executive control over the data protection board, and opaque mechanisms for obtaining personal data without consent or transparency," the petition said.
"The impugned provisions collectively violate the constitutional guarantees of equality, privacy, informational autonomy, free expression, and procedural fairness. The provisions violate the constitutional principles of separation of powers and judicial independence," it added.
The plea also claimed that the Act fails to create a "right-protective" privacy framework, and that the provisions must be struck down, read down or severed to be in conformity with the Constitution.
