The Data Protection Bill that aims to restrict and impose conditions on the cross-border transfer of personal data and prevent any misuse of personal information is ready and would be placed in Parliament soon, said Ravi Shankar Prasad, Union Communications, Electronics and Information Technology Minister on Monday.

The Personal Data Protection Bill, 2018 is based on the recommendations of the government constituted high level panel, headed by former Supreme Court’s judge, Justice BN Srikrishan. The bill restricts and imposes conditions on the cross border transfer of personal data, and suggests setting up of Data Protection Authority of India to prevent any misuse of personal information, sources told IANS.

Earlier, the Reserve bank of India (RBI) had released a circular requiring that all the data relating to payment system are stored in a system only in India. The Bill would also address the RBI’s circular.

Prasad while delivering a keynote address at the CyFy 2019, organised by the Observer Research Foundation (ORF), said that the bill would have a practical view of all aspects of the internet including its availability, accessibility, neutrality, commerce and all of these should be able to function in coordination.

Minister further said that the government is for free and fair accessibility of the internet through various gates and against any restriction. At the same time, it cannot allow terrorists to make use of the privacy plea while regretting that some apps like WhatsApp are not doing enough to check the misuse of the medium by communalists and radicalists.

The government should be able to know the origin of fake news and other misuse of social media, and it would bring in regulations to check the medium by these apps, he said.

The IT minster said that platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp have the biggest business in India. All apps should cooperate with the government in checking the abuse of their platforms by revealing and exposing the origin of the message and identity of the messenger.

Recently YES Bank had filed a police complaint to the Mumbai Police over the spread of fake news about the bad financial health of the bank over WhatsApp and other social media platforms. In a regulatory filing the bank had requested the authorities to form a multi-disciplinary team of experts for detecting the origin of the circulated fake news about the bank.

The IT Ministry has been meeting social media giants, WhatsApp and Twitter officals over tracing of the fake news.