-Financial Express ”This is the swamp of unconstitutionality, and unwisdom, into which the ECI and the voter will be cast if this linking proceeds as proposed. The linking of the voter database with the UID database must bewilder anyone who has watched the progression of the UID project. It has been plagued by exclusion, fraud, leakage, biometric failure, insuperable barriers to updating the information on the database, and ‘civil death’. Attempts to...

-Newsclick.in The Bill and the Joint Parliamentary Committee’s recommendations are riddled with many problems, and some of them are giving rise to serious concerns over enabling the State with surveillance power. The much-awaited Joint Parliamentary Committee’s report on the country's first comprehensive data protection law has been tabled in the Parliament. After two years of intense deliberation and consultation, the report was finalised and adopted. The law, if passed, would regulate data...

-The Hindu Does the JPC adopted bill fail to protect individuals against Government agencies? The story so far: The Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) constituted to examine India’s proposed data protection law, the Personal data Protection Bill, 2019, released its report on Monday. It contains a number of suggestions that could strengthen the final law, among others, a recognition that promotion of the digital economy cannot take precedence over the protection of citizen...

-Newsclick.in Healthcare professionals and experts have raised concerns about the impact of the digital health mission’s framework on data privacy and access to health. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday launched the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM), which he said would “strengthen health facilities” in the country. via video conference. Currently, the project is being implemented in a pilot phase in six Union Territories. In his Independence Day speech in 2020, Narendra Modi...

-The Hindu 40% belong to SC/ST communities; 88% of IIT Guwahati dropouts, 76% of IIT Delhi from reserved categories. Almost 63% of the undergraduate dropouts at the top seven Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) over the last five years are from the reserved categories, according to Education Ministry data given in response to a question in the Rajya Sabha today. Almost 40% were from the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe communities. In...