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tl;dr
The Monsoon Session of Parliament came to an end on August 09, 2024, when both Houses of Parliament adjourned sine die. The Session was originally scheduled to conclude on August 12, 2024. The Session saw the introduction of 14 bills, of which 4 were passed by the Lok Sabha and 3 by the Rajya Sabha. During the Session, the Parliament presented and passed the Union Budget for 2024-2025.
Important documents
- Expenditure Budget 2024-2025 (Link)
- IFF’s analysis on the Union Budget for 2024-2025 (Link)
- IFF’s Legislative Brief for 2024-2025 (Link)
- Consolidated budgetary data for selected items (Link)
Background
The 2024 Monsoon Session began on July 22 and concluded on August 09, sitting for a total of 15 days. While there were flags raised by the opposition for cutting short the Parliament Session for the 11th time, the other side argued that it was done due to the completion of the listed business. Following the results of the general elections declared in June 2024, expectations of productivity from this Monsoon Session were high. The productivity of Lok Sabha has seemingly almost tripled from the last Monsoon Session, from 43% in 2023 to 136% and doubled in the case of Rajya Sabha to 118%.
The Lok Sabha saw the introduction of 12 bills which included but were not limited to The Finance Bill, 2024, the Jammu and Kashmir Appropriation Bill, 2024, the Bhartiya Vayuyan Vidheyak, 2024, The Appropriation (No.2) Bill, 2024, The Waqf (Amendment) Bill, 2024. Out of these, 3 bills namely the Jammu and Kashmir Appropriation Bill, 2024, the Appropriation Bill, 2024 as passed by Lok Sabha, and the Finance Bill, 2024 have been passed by both Houses and are now awaiting presidential assent.
Deliberation on the Union Budget 2024-25 reportedly lasted for 27 hours and 19 minutes and 181 Members of Parliament (“MPs”) participated in the discussion. While the opposition expressed their unhappiness over the government’s refusal to discuss demands for grants for key ministries like Home and Defence, the Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju claimed that the budget session did not witness a single-day washout after several years. However, the Rajya Sabha saw walkouts and protests from the opposition and even saw a walkout from the Chairman himself.
Brief overview: Union Budget 2024-25
The Union Budget for the Financial Year (“FY”) 2024-25 has cumulatively allocated ₹1,44,653.12 Cr to the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (“MeitY”), the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (“MIB”), the Department of Telecommunications (“DoT”), and the Ministry of Home Affairs (“MHA”). Thus the total planned expenditure of DoT, MeitY, MHA, and MIB (₹1,44,653.12 Cr) saw an increase of 18.23% over the Revised Estimates (“RE”) of 2023-24 (₹1,22,351.2 Cr).
A quick glance at Ministry-wise Budget Estimates (“BE”) and RE can be seen in the table below:
Meity: While the Budget 2024-2025 has allocated funds for the promotion of digital transactions (excluding digital payments), the IndiaAI Mission, the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (“CERT-In”) and the establishment of the Data Protection Board (“DPB”). MeitY has allocated close to ₹2 crores to establish the DPB, however out of ₹2 crores a mere ₹4 lakhs has been allocated for capital expenditure and the rest ₹1.96 crore is for revenue expenditure (salaries, allowances, etc). The budgetary allowance for the establishment of the DPB is a welcoming step although the minuscule amount of ₹4 lakhs will prove to be insufficient for capital expenditure. Additionally, the budget did not allocate any funds to the rural digital literacy scheme Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyan (PMGDISHA).
DoT: The 2024-2025 Budget has allocated a significant chunk of money towards BharatNet (₹8500 Cr), however, it has reduced the allocation for Universal Services Obligation Fund now renamed as Digital Bharat Nidhi and regulatory bodies such as Telecom Regulatory Authority of India and Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal. The Budget also did not see any allocation towards ‘Artificial Intelligence and Face Recognition Powered Solution for Telecom SIM Subscriber Verification (ASTR)’ whereas the previous budget (2023-2024) allocated ₹50,00,000 for it. Further, the budget steeply cut the funding for the Digital Intelligence Unit Project, which investigates fraudulent activity involving telecom resources, such as Unsolicited Commercial Communication.
MIB: Unlike the other Ministries, the MIB saw a decrease of 2.41% in the budgetary allocation as compared to the 2023-2024 revised budget.
MHA: The MHA saw a 26.12% increase in its budgetary allowance for 2024-2025 as compared to that of 2023-2024, however to the utter disappointment, the MHA did not allocate any funds towards its Cyber and Information Security Division, which includes key schemes such as the Cybercrime Prevention against Women and Children Scheme.
Significant Parliamentary responses and deliberations
Throughout the Monsoon Session, we tracked the significant answers to Parliamentary questions (starred and unstarred) placed in both Houses by various MPs. A few key responses received were:
Unstarred Questions:
On the BSNL data breach: On July 24, 2024, Dr Amar Singh of the Indian National Congress (“INC”) asked the DoT about the BSNL data breach, which involved critical user data, and about the collective measures being taken to avoid service outages, degraded performance, and unauthorised access to telecom operations. The Minister of State of DoT answered that CERT-In did report a breach on May 20, 2024, & found that one File Transfer Protocol server had data similar to the sample shared by CERT-In. However, he claimed that there was no breach in the Home Location Register (“HLR”) and hence no service outage in BSNL’s network. Additionally, he also shared the various steps taken by BSNL as a remedial measure to prevent such breaches and also informed the house about the constitution of an Inter-Ministerial Committee to conduct audits of the telecom networks and to suggest remedial measures for the prevention of data breaches in such networks.
IFF has written a letter to the CERT-In on the BSNL data breach on July 25, 2024, and urged them to look into this incident. Interestingly, the leaked sensitive data reportedly also included HLR details, which has been categorically denied by the Minister in his response. Interestingly, BSNL suffered another data breach in December 2023, where the leaked data included sensitive personal data such as email addresses, billing details, contact numbers, and customer information (read our letter to CERT-In dated December 27, 2023, here).
See our thread summarising the response here.
On ownership of Digiyatra and associated data concerns: On August 05, 2024, MP Jawahar Sircar of the All India Trinamool Congress sought clarity about the ownership of DigiYatra and asked about the agencies responsible for the facial data it collects, to which the Minister of Civil Aviation responded that the DigiYatra Foundation is a private entity that does not store data.
See our thread summarising the responses here.
Starred questions:
On August 01, 2024, MP Manish Tiwari of INC also raised concerns about the use of Facial Recognition Technology (“FRT”) and the DigiYatra app. He asked the Ministry of Civil Aviation about the safeguards in place to protect the integrity and privacy of critical personal data collected. While the Minister assured that the data collected by the DigiYatra app is encrypted and regularly purged, it failed to clarify how the app meets the privacy standards laid down in the case of J. (Retd.) KS Puttaswamy vs Union of India (2017) 10 SCC.
However, there were contradictions between his claims and the Ministry’s DigiYatra policy. Further, the Ministry in his response referred to itself and DigiYatra Foundation interchangeably, despite its recent claim of DigiYatra being a private entity. See our thread summarising the responses here.
Issue of digital and bank frauds: The session saw Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) MP, Priyanka Chaturvedi highlight the issue of digital and bank frauds in the Parliament on July 22, 2024. Citing an RBI report, she highlighted the significant increase in bank frauds (300%) and digital frauds (708%) within the last two years and stressed the need for improving financial literacy.
State-sponsored phone hacking of journalists and politicians: MP Priyanka Chaturvedi also went on to highlight the state-sponsored phone hacking of journalists and politicians, by referring to the Pegasus incident and the recent Apple threat incident. She also expressed her surprise at the lack of response from MeitY, despite repeatedly raising this issue. See our thread here
Additionally, in a supplementary question during the question hour, Raghav Chadha of the Aam Aadmi Party also raised the issue of state-sponsored cyberattacks on politicians and journalists and asked the Centre to investigate such attacks. The MoS denied any state-sponsored hacking or tracking as mentioned by Raghav Chadha.
He further said that regarding the Apple threat notification, CERT-In is in touch with Apple and the Ministry is in the process of getting information from Apple about their conclusion.
Private Member’s Bill:
This Session also saw the introduction of a Private Member’s Bill (“PMB”) by MP P. Sandosh Kumar, who introduced a bill titled ‘National Artificial Technology Regulatory Authority Bill, 2024’. The Bill seeks to regulate and monitor the use of artificial intelligence and related technology in the country, and incidents related to them. Further, MP Mausam Noor was also scheduled to introduce a PMB on the ‘Deepfakes Prevention and Criminalisation Bill, 2023’, however, it was not taken up due to the MP’s absence. See our thread here.
This post has been drafted with the assistance of Policy Intern, Kumar Utsav.