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We have prepared our legislative brief on digital rights for the Monsoon Session 2024 of the Indian Parliament. In our brief, we aim to reflect on the deliberations and developments around key digital rights issues during the 17th Lok Sabha, with a special focus on the recently concluded sessions, to set the context for the upcoming 18th Lok Sabha. Since the full Union Budget for the remaining 2024-2025 FY will be presented in the upcoming session, we provide an overview of all the Union Budgets tabled by the Union government during the 17th LS for MeitY, MHA, MIB, and DoT.
Important documents
- IFF’s Legislative Brief on Digital Rights – Monsoon Session 2024 (link)
- Prior legislative briefs (click here)
Recap of the 17th Lok Sabha
The 17th Lok Sabha (“LS”) was a five-year term during which 15 Parliamentary Sessions were held between June 2019 and February 2024. A total of 202 bills were introduced and 221 bills were passed during the 17th LS. During this term, the LS functioned for 88% of its scheduled time and, for the first time in Parliamentary history, did not elect a Deputy Speaker. 58% of Bills introduced during the 17th term were passed within two weeks of introduction and 35% and 34% with less than an hour of discussion in LS and RS respectively. Scrutiny of Bills by Parliamentary Committees was also limited, with only 16% of Bills referred to Committees. These circumstances indicate an unease in doing Parliamentary business, affecting the functioning of the Indian democracy.
This term also witnessed suspensions of Members of Parliament (“MPs”) on several grounds, most representing the opposition parties. Notably, 100 MPs from the LS and 46 from Rajya Sabha (“RS”) were suspended in the previous Winter Session (14th Session), which is also the highest number of suspensions in the history of Parliament so far.
Over the years and past terms, the time spent discussing the Union Budget has significantly reduced. The 17th term witnessed a discussion on the Budget for an average of 35 hours. The 2023 Budget Session saw limited legislative activity and the Union Budget during that session was passed with minimal discussions and amidst continuous disruptions. The 17th LS discussed the Annual Budget for the Financial Year (“FY”) 2024-2025 for 35 hours on average (in the Lower House) and about 80% of the budget was voted on without discussion, with the entirety of the budget being passed without discussion in 2023.
Potential issues to be taken up in the upcoming session
- Digital Personal Data Protection Act and Rules: The Digital Personal Data Protection Act (“DPDPA”), 2023 was introduced and passed in the previous Monsoon Session (13th Session) with a combined deliberation of merely two hours across both Houses, with minimal inputs from neutral and opposition MPs, without due consideration to parliamentary rules and procedure. The DPDPA, 2023 has not yet been implemented, and the Rules set to operationalise many of its provisions are not yet notified. Expected to be notified within the initial 100 days of the formation of a new Union government, MeitY is considering a 45-day public consultation on the 21 draft Rules it will reportedly release under the DPDPA, 2023. Such a short time frame may prove to be insufficient to understand, analyse, and meaningfully respond to the draft Rules (See IFF’s letter to MeitY on the consultation for DPDP Rules here). Several missed timelines, set by MeitY itself, to release the rules under the DPDPA, 2023 have led to uncertainty. Read IFF’s analysis of the DPDPA, 2023 here.
- Telecommunication Act, 2023 gets partially notified: The Telecommunications Act (“Telecom Act”), 2023 was introduced and passed in both houses—with over 140 opposition MPs suspended and amid a state of chaos, disarray, protest, and walkouts in the Parliament. A repackaged version of the colonial Indian Telegraph Act, 1885, the Act confer government authorities with unbridled powers and infringes on individual privacy. There is also uncertainty regarding the applicability of the Act to “Over-the-Top” (“OTT”) communication services like WhatsApp. In addition to allowing for excessive surveillance and suspension of internet services without adequate accountability, oversight, or necessary procedural safeguards, it misses a huge opportunity to introduce reforms and create a rights-centric law. The Rules for the Telecom Act, 2024 is reportedly slated for release within 100 days of the new Union government taking charge. On June 21, 2024, the Ministry of Communications (“MoC”) issued a Gazette notification for enforcing certain sections of the Telecom Act, 2023. Sections 1, 2, 10 to 30, 42 to 44, 46, 47, 50 to 58, 61 and 62 of the Act went into effect from June 26, 2024.
- Criminal Law Reform Acts: In the 2023 Winter Session of the Parliament, three new Criminal Laws were passed in both Houses with minimal debate and little to no input from the opposition. They came into effect on July 01, 2024. The Bharatiya Nyaya (Second) Sanhita, 2023, Bharatiya Sakshya (Second) Bill, 2023, and Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha (Second) Sanhita, 2023 were introduced with the objective of “decolonising” British-era criminal laws and retaining “Indianness”, and were then referred to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs, which failed to give meaningful review and recommendations to the bills. The laws contain several provisions that threaten our fundamental rights to privacy and free speech. They push for the digitalisation of many aspects of criminal procedure, and include ‘digital evidence’ under the ambit of the evidence law, without outlining procedural safeguards. Though the word ‘sedition’ has been deleted from the law, the concept is retained through vague provisions, which leaves room for arbitrary application. Executive powers pertaining to the search and seizure of digital evidence have also been broadened. Overall, the laws do little to reform the criminal justice system, but instead introduce concepts and powers that threaten fundamental rights and freedoms, particularly free speech, privacy, and dignity.
- Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill, 2023: The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (“MIB”) released the Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill, 2023 (“Broadcasting Bill, 2023”) for public consultation on November 10 and accepted comments till January 15, 2024. MIB has not published the comments received during the consultation. The draft bill includes OTT content & digital news published by individuals under the regulatory ambit raising concerns for online free speech and journalistic freedom. Exerting executive control over “OTT” content will lead to over-compliance and self-censorship on the part of platforms, who will be keen to avoid the wide discretion allowed to the government when it comes to punishments. Risks around censorship of speech expressing satire, irony, sarcasm, dissent, anger, even maybe portrayals of facts and hard-hitting truth which is unpalatable to the Union government or politically influential and powerful communities, may become formalised if the Broadcasting Bill becomes a law of parliament.
- Upcoming ‘Digital India Act’: The ‘Digital India Act’ (“DIA”) is yet to be released in the public domain, which aims to overhaul the two-decade old, current legal framework governing the rapidly changing digital ecosystem, i.e. the IT Act, 2000. The ‘DIA’ has been a subject of great discussion and speculation in the last few years, but has not been released for public consultation yet. MeitY organised two meetings, on March 09, 2023 and May 23, 2023 in Bengaluru and Mumbai respectively, where the former Minister of State Rajeev Chandrashekhar listed the broad goals, principles, and structure of the upcoming ‘DIA’. These meetings were attended by as many as 300 stakeholders, consisting of law firms, industry, startups, technology companies, policy advocates, etc. We have been pointedly requesting them to collaborate with multiple and diverse stakeholders and work towards building a statutory framework that safeguards the user through an open, transparent and deliberate public consultation. Moreover, we urged the Ministry first to address existing lacunae and inadequacies of the IT Act, 2000 before attempting to replace it, so that the new law does not replicate them. Further, we reiterated that the new digital legal framework should be based on constitutional principles, enshrining constitutionally guaranteed fundamental rights.
- Rushed intervention for tackling the issue of Deepfakes must be revisited: In December 2023, MeitY issued an advisory to all intermediaries urging them to follow the due diligence obligations listed under the notified Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Amendment Rules, 2023 (“IT Rules, 2023”). This formal advisory as well as several other notices sent to intermediaries reiterated the need to take proactive steps to curb ‘online harms’ on the internet, particularly the rising instances of deepfakes. In early January 2024, reports surfaced that MeitY is considering amending the IT Rules, 2021 to explicitly define deepfakes and mandate intermediaries to make “reasonable efforts” to avoid hosting them. On March 01, 2024, MeitY issued another advisory, directing intermediaries to take “explicit permission” of the Union government before making available “under-testing/ unreliable Artificial Intelligence model(s)/LLM/Generative AI, software(s) or algorithm(s)”. After receiving heavy criticism from industry stakeholders and others for being too vaguely phrased and stifling innovation, MeitY issued a revised advisory on March 15, in which it did away with the requirement to seek government approval. The media coverage of informal statements by Ministers and unnamed officials around the approach to tackle deepfakes has generated confusion and raised concerns about hasty and superficial interventions. Pursuing rushed policy or regulatory actions based on a few closed-door meetings with technology platforms without engaging in a broader multi-stakeholder consultation may become counter-productive.
- Social impact of emerging technologies: State and Union governments are deploying artificial intelligence (“AI”) on a large scale across sectors, spanning uses in urban administration, policing, surveillance, and welfare service delivery, to name a few. The deployment manifestly lacks transparency. State and union governments often do not make public the accuracy assessments or reports of the technologies they use across sectors. They do not reveal adequate information about the usage in the press releases or tenders. Research recommends that artificial intelligence, in its present form, should not be used in welfare service delivery like they currently are – as the datasets are often not free from bias. The manner of rapid and opaque deployment of AI in public sectors suggests that state and union governments may be using emerging technologies as “snake oil”, where an increasing number of interventions are being labelled “AI-powered” without evidence. Additionally, some government initiatives such as using AI to detect distress on people’s faces or fatigue in drivers’ eyes, are not based in science, as AI globally does not yet possess the ability to do so. At this stage, the use of emerging technologies in the public sector must stop or, at the least, be severely restricted, especially in the absence of research and understanding on AI technology.
Summary of the Union Budget during the 17th Lok Sabha
In the final session of the 17th LS term, Union Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented the Union Interim Budget for the FY 2024-2025. In the upcoming Monsoon Session, the new Union government will place a new full budget in both houses for deliberation.
Table 1: Budgeted Expenditure for 2019-2024 (In Rs. crores)
The Budgeted Expenditure (“BE”) for MeitY, MHA, MIB and DoT witnessed an overall increase in the 2023-24 Union Budget compared to 2019-2020, a notable starting point for building and implementing robust digital systems. The budget allocated to DoT has witnessed the highest increase among these ministries – 295.61% over the last four years – and MeitY has witnessed the second highest (148.71%). DoT has drastically cut short allocations to the Universal Service Obligation Fund (“USOF”), but, on a positive note, consistently increased funds to BharatNet. Disappointingly, the Budget for 2023-2024 and the Interim Budget for 2024- 2025 from MeitY did not allocate any funds to Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyan, breaking the trend of continuous budgetary support for the rural digital literacy scheme since its inception in 2017. The Budget for MHA and MIB have gone through inconsistent changes over the past five years (including the 2024-2025 Interim Budget).
Table 2: Actual Expenditure for 2019-2023 (In Rs. crores)
- MeitY: 63.1339% increase in the actual expenditure (“AE”) from 2019-2020 to 2022-2023.
- MIB: 0.12% decrease in the AE from 2019-2020 to 2022-2023.
- DoT: 331.439% increase in the AE from 2019-2020 to 2022-2023.
- MHA: 74.6845% decrease in the AE from 2019-2020 to 2022-2023.
- Total: 154.56% increase in the total AE from 2019-2020 to 2022-2023
There’s this and much more in our Legislative Brief
This is a sneak peek at some of the issues we have covered in-depth in our brief, including data on telecom and internet connectivity; statistics on implementation of schemes; details on key areas of digital governance such as public consultations, privacy and data protection, free speech, access to internet, and surveillance. For more analysis, statistics, and insight into future legislative developments related to digital rights, see here!