Personal Data Protection Bill: The central government may have used the female pronouns “she” and “her” to refer to persons for the first time in its draught Personal Data Protection Bill published on Friday, three months after its unexpected withdrawal from the lower chamber of Parliament.

According to the draught Bill’s interpretation section, “In this Act, the pronouns “her” and “she” have been used for all individuals regardless of gender.”

The draught further said “A Data Principal is presumed to have given agreement to the processing of her personal data if such processing is essential” under the section on deemed consent.

“In a situation where the Data Principal voluntarily provides her personal data to the Data Fiduciary and it is reasonably expected that she would provide such personal data.”

It continued, elaborating with an illustration, “In order to reserve a table at a restaurant, “A” gives a Data Fiduciary her name and mobile number. It will be assumed that “A” has granted her approval for the Data Fiduciary to collect her name and mobile number in order to confirm the reservation.”

For non-compliance, this draught Digital Personal Data Protection Bill stipulates fines of up to Rs 500 crore and the creation of a regulator. It has done away with regulating the use of non-personal data by only focusing on personal data.

Ashwini Vaishnaw, the Union Minister for Railways, Communications, Electronics and Information Technology, provided a link to the PDF of the draught bill on Friday in an effort to get feedback from the public.

The government intends to introduce the proposed bill in Parliament before the upcoming budget session after considerable feedback.