India DPDPA: Article 44 – Amendments to Certain Acts
44. Amendments to Certain Acts
(1) In section 14 of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India Act, 1997, in clause (c), for sub-clauses (i) and (ii), the following sub-clauses shall be substituted,namely:—“(i) the Appellate Tribunal under the Information Technology Act, 2000;
(ii) the Appellate Tribunal under the Airports Economic Regulatory Authority of India Act, 2008; and
(iii) the Appellate Tribunal under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023.”.
(2) The Information Technology Act, 2000 shall be amended in the following manner, namely:—
(a) section 43A shall be omitted;
(b) in section 81, in the proviso, after the words and figures “the Patents Act, 1970”, the words and figures “or the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023” shall be inserted; and
(c) in section 87, in sub-section (2), clause (ob) shall be omitted.
(3) In section 8 of the Right to Information Act, 2005, in sub-section (1), for clause (j), the following clause shall be substituted, namely:—
“(j) information which relates to personal information;”.
What Article 44 Means for Your Business
Article 44 amends two existing Indian laws to align them with the DPDPA framework: the Right to Information Act 2005 and the Information Technology Act 2000. These amendments remove or modify provisions that conflicted with or were superseded by the DPDPA’s data protection framework.
- The amendment to the Right to Information Act limits the disclosure of personal information under RTI requests where such disclosure would violate the DPDPA, public authorities must now apply DPDPA standards when responding to RTI requests involving personal data.
- The IT Act 2000 amendments remove the old Section 43A framework for sensitive personal data, which is now governed by the DPDPA, businesses should replace IT Act-based data protection clauses in contracts with DPDPA-compliant provisions.
- Review all contractual and policy references to Section 43A of the IT Act and update them to reference the DPDPA and DPDP Rules 2025 instead.
- The interaction between the DPDPA, the IT Act, and other legislation will continue to evolve, conduct a periodic review of your legal compliance framework to ensure it reflects the current statutory landscape.