Telcos, Paytm oppose Centre's cross-border data transfer move, bat for localisation: Report

The Data Protection Bill moots a concept of 'trusted geographies' where the government will prescribe a country onto a whitelist, to which personal data may be transferred

Telecom majors Jio and Airtel, and payments platform Paytm have expressed opposition to the Centre's move to allow transfer of user data to "whitelisted" countries as part of the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2022.

The Bill moots a concept of "trusted geographies" where the government will prescribe a country or territory onto a “whitelist,” to which personal data may be transferred from India.

While the move has seen generally positive reception in the Indian internet industry, the telecom majors contend that any transfer of data will mean India’s law enforcement agencies will face big challenges in accessing data of Indian citizens “once it is processed by an overseas telco or a tech company based in a foreign country," The Economic Times reported, citing an executive.

Airtel, Jio, and Paytm have officially communicated their position to the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) through a submission routed through IAMAI, the report said.

Read | Digital Personal Data Protection Bill is industry-friendly: IAMAI

"Jio is strongly opposed to any form of cross-border transfer of personal data of Indians and wants the government to mandate that personal data of Indians must reside in the country itself,” a senior industry executive told the publication.

Sources told ET that compromise or misue of data could leave Indians in a vulnerable position with only remote chances of legal recourse and that Indian law enforcement may be unable to help due to a lack of real-time access to citizens' data.

As such, the companies are also asking that the Centre ensures that rights of Indians are equally enforceable and that local law enforcement agencies have access to Indian user data processed in a third country “before whitelisting any foreign countries”.

Sources also said that any move by the government to allow cross-border transfers of data could put billions of dollars of potential investments in state-of-the-art data centres and in building India’s digital infrastructure on hold.