Digital India: According to reports, the Indian government is expected to publish the first version of the Digital India Act (DIA) in place of the IT Act of 2000, either by the end of July or early August.
The process will begin with pre-draft consultations starting in the first week of May, during which lawyers, public policy consultants, and other experts will be asked to provide their opinions on what should be included in the draft.
These stakeholders will be given 45 days to submit their written feedback. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) will then review the submissions and invite government and private legal experts to review the draft before releasing the final version for public consultation.
Digital India: Public consultations
The public consultations are expected to begin in Delhi on May 3, and later in other cities. The Ministry has already conducted internal meetings on the Act.
The Indian government is planning to substitute the Information Technology (IT) Act of 2000 with the Digital India Act, which, according to Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the Minister of State for Electronics and IT, is intended to establish India as a global center for innovation and entrepreneurship.
The government has emphasized the importance of creating an internet that is transparent, secure, reliable, and answerable, and believes that the proposed Digital India Act will assist in achieving these goals by addressing new obstacles in the rapidly changing and expanding internet domain.
What’s Special about Digital India Act?
MeitY’s presentation on the proposed Digital India Act, 2023, which was released in March, emphasized the importance of having a specialized and dedicated adjudicatory mechanism for online civil and criminal offenses.
The Digital India Act will regulate operations like data localisation, social media, online gaming, cyber bullying, e-commerce, artificial intelligence and internet platforms, according to reports. It could also become the country’s base document for tech legislations in near future.
The presentation also highlighted several limitations of the current IT Act, including a lack of comprehensive provisions on user rights, trust, and safety, as well as a regulatory approach for “harmful” and “illegal” content and institutional regulatory bodies that are converged, coordinated, and harmonized.
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Digital India Growth
Over the past few years, the Indian government has been focusing on enacting new laws for the digital space to meet the needs of the country’s rapidly evolving digital ecosystem.
Two new bills, the Telecommunications Bill and the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Bill, have been proposed, but they have yet to be passed and are expected to be presented during the monsoon session of parliament.
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