Govt is ‘judge, jury, and executioner’ with new digital rules, says Press Club of India

In a detailed statement, the Press Club of India expressed “deep anguish” over the manner in which the Narendra Modi government notified the Digital Personal Data Protection Rules under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (DPDPA, 2023). 

Notified on November 15, the rules “lay out procedures for consent managers, data retention norms, processing of children’s data, obligations of significant data fiduciaries, and carve-outs for the state when processing personal data”. But, like other journalist associations, including the Editor's Guild of India and the DIGIPUB News India Foundation, the club has noted that these rules erode press freedom, dilute the Right to Information framework, and leave journalists vulnerable to unclear and burdensome compliance demands. 

Moreover, according to the club, despite their best efforts to engage proactively and positively with the Modi government, they have been met with “a wall of obfuscation from the executive”.

The statement on Monday began by noting that the club and 22 other press bodies, representing "thousands of working journalists”, submitted a detailed Joint Memorandum in June 2025 to the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY), to highlight the “serious lacunas” in the DPDPA, 2023 that they believe "impinge of press freedom and directly hit Article 19(1).”

In its statement, the club noted that the intention behind presenting the joint memorandum, while engaging “the government in the most constructive and democratic manner”, was to produce rules that wouldn’t hamper the functioning of journalists and media organisations. Additionally, through this joint memorandum, the club sought to demonstrate how sections of the law “were riddled with serious ambiguities due to their sweeping definitions and scope” that open up “numerous possibilities of weaponisation of the law with the purpose of curtailing press freedom”. The memorandum even offered “real-world scenarios” from experienced journalists to illustrate how provisions of this law could deter them from their duties.

The Press Club of India was clear in its intent. They did not want the law repealed. They understand the need for a law that protects citizens’ personal data. Instead, by submitting this memorandum, they sought to carve out “exceptions for people and organisations performing journalistic duties”. 

In addition to the joint memorandum, the club and Indian Women’s Press Corps also submitted a set of 35 questions in the form of FAQs to a senior bureaucrat in the MEITY on July 28 to seek further clarification on multiple sections (2, 5,6, 7, 10, 17, 28, 33, 36 and 37) of the DPDPA 2023 and their sub-clauses and how they apply to journalistic work. 

As the statement noted: “Both the Joint Memorandum and FAQs also held that the dilution of Section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act, 2005 – via Section 44 of the DPDP Act, 2023 – was detrimental to the functioning of the press. The RTI section, in its original form, was a vital tool for journalists and media organisations to access information in the public interest.” Furthermore, the statement made clear how “thousands of journalists walked the extra yard” for the government in flagging some of the major issues pertaining to the DPDPA. 

The club stated that it has a “long and distinguished history of expanding and upholding press freedom”. It cited its role during the Emergency in 1975, when some of its members were imprisoned for “acts of defiance”. The statement also harked back to the protest undertaken by its members, including Kuldip Nayyar, HK Dua, Hiranmay Karlekar, and Pritish Chakravarty, among others, in 1988, when it challenged the Rajiv Gandhi government's Defamation Bill, 1988.

Despite their best efforts, the club stated unequivocally that the government showed no intention to provide “legally binding assurances” and that the clauses in the DPDPA 2023 “won’t be weaponised to hamper or curtail the functioning of the press”. 

It also accused the political executive of donning “the mantle of the judge, jury, and executioner,” and hoped that “better sense prevails and the government provides clear-cut exemptions for journalistic purposes from the ambiguous provisions” of the DPDPA.   

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