India’s controversial Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, 2023 came into effect on November 14 amid backlash from critics who say the law will increase government surveillance, restrict freedom of information, and weaken press freedom.Now it is challenged by Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA) in the Supreme Court of India.
The implementation of the DPDP Act by India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology follows its passage through the Indian Parliament on August 9, 2023. The Act has drawn strong criticism from press freedom groups and academics, who argue it grants “arbitrary and undisputed powers” to the Indian government and weakens key privacy safeguards.
Its broad, vaguely defined exemptions allow state agencies access to personal data with minimal independent oversight, while offering individuals no clear right to prevent their data from being retained in databases. The law also amends a key provision of the Right to Information Act that previously enabled journalists to obtain and disclose information in the public interest, creating new legal hurdles for transparency and public-interest reporting
India’s biggest news publishers including Ambani's Network18, Adani's NDTV, Indian Express, Times Internet & others mount the most high-profile challenge yet to Modi’s privacy law, warning it would “render investigative journalism a benign and neutered recorder of events.”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government last year announced implementation of a privacy law to protect digital personal data of users, raising compliance requirements for platforms like Meta and Google. The publishers have said that since media outlets were not exempt, the law was an invasion of press freedom.
Digital News Publishers Association has taken the law to the Supreme Court. They argue it would trample investigative work and let New Delhi identify journalists’ sources.
The provisions “constitute pre-censorship which is anathema to any democracy worth its name,” the group’s 698-page filing says.
Media companies received assurances in an August meeting with the government that the law would protect press freedom, but not having a written carve-out for journalists like in the European Union, Singapore and Britain was alarming, India's Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA) said in its confidential filing at the Supreme Court.
The key concerns:
Consent: requiring a journalist to notify the subject of an investigation and seek consent “would allow that subject to destroy evidence, intimidate witnesses”
Erasure: people can withdraw consent and demand their data be erased, which the group says could force publishers to unpublish or heavily redact news reports
Sources: a “nakedly unguided” power to demand information that “can extend to privileged communications in possession of a reporter or the informant”
In a letter to the government, the group said India “has chosen to grant broad exemptions to the state, while failing to extend any corresponding protection to the press.”
The publishers are demanding that most of the law's contentious provisions, which kick in from May 2027, should be quashed. They are arguing the law could force a journalist to get prior consent from a person they want to investigate and force publishers to erase stories. They also say powers granted by the law to demand information could expose reporters' sources.
