Jai Raj Bhati
The Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) in Delhi on 3rd of January 2025 published the draft of Digital Personal Data Protection Rules, 2025. The Draft Rules have their legal framework established on the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, which was cleared by the Parliament 14 months earlier, in August 2023.
The Government aims to have parental observation of social media accounts of minors by, processing the minor`s data, digital organization will need to carry out effective measures to check that the adults identifying themselves as the parents of the children is verifiable if there is a requirement for any legal compliance. Parents’ identity and age will also have to be validated and verified through voluntarily provided identity proof “issued by an entity entrusted by law or the Government”, as per the draft rules.
The data fiduciaries will need to take measure to verify the details of consent provider and will have to delete the data after the time prescribed in consent. The digital platforms will only be empowered to use and process the data of the individuals if, they have given their consent to the data manager; are the legal persons who are entrusted to manage the data of consents of individual.
The Act has the provision to impose a penalty of up to Rs 250 crore on data fiduciaries but there is no penalty imposed on data managers. The Draft Rules has mentioned suspending and cancelling of registration on repeated violation of rules imposed. E-commerce, social media and gaming platforms will be marked under the term data fiduciary.