India Notified Digital Data Rules Amid Media Backlash

The Indian union government notified the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Rules, 2025 on 14 Nov, first drafted in 2023. On paper, the DPDP Act is India’s first law to preserve the privacy of individuals and lays the onus on platforms to secure informed consent from users. This is bound to impact the way individuals interact with platforms, and will also make platforms liable to preserve—or delete on request—private information of all citizens. Media watchdogs have warned the new rules undermine press freedom, cripple the Right to Information Act (RTI) and expose journalists to various compliance burdens. The move was widely opposed by critics including the Editors Guild of India and the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF). In a statement, IFF said: ‘The DPDP Act itself instituted onerous duties on individuals and carved out broad exceptions that weaken the fundamental right to privacy. The move is a direct attack to the freedom of journalism as a journalist can be punished for publishing a news report of public interest, which under this law can be seen as violating ‘right to privacy’. The Act has grave consequences for Panjab where the government often blocks social media accounts. Panjab is heading into elections in a little over a year where many journalists will be exposing the misdeeds of the incumbent government. Earlier in 2025, 21 media organizations submitted a memorandum against the DPDP Act saying that it would end up ‘criminalizing routine reporting’ and threaten source confidentiality. The government has also operationalized Section 44(3) of the DPDP Act, which has a direct bearing on Section 8(1)(j) of the Right to Information (RTI) Act. RTI activists Aruna Roy and Anjali Bhardwaj say, under the new rules the power of the RTI Act is being neutralized. Justice Ajit Prakash Shah, in a letter to the Attorney General of India, points out how the new Act, by amending Section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act, replaces the narrowly tailored exemption in its original version with an ‘overbroad provision for withholding information, and removing the ‘public interest’ override’ (earlier coverage).