IRCTC has issued a tender document on “Monetization of Data” which has invoked strong reactions from Privacy and Data Protection industry. A copy of the document is available below.
In 2018, UIDAI had issued another tender request regarding “Monitoring of Social Media”. This was a tender for monitoring reports about UIDAI in the media just like scanning of news papers by reputation management companies. But the Andolan Jeevies raised a hue and cry, the pliant and ignorant Supreme Court obliged and the cowardly Government withdrew the tender notification.
Details of the above UIDAI incident are available in the search link below:
1.Search on Naavi.org for UIDAI+tender
2. “Supreme Court Slams UIDAI”.. Is it a fake news created by Economic times?
3.Supreme Court should make public the suggestions made by Abhishek Manu Singhvi
Now a similar incident has surfaced about a tender document. This tender issue is directly related to the “Privacy” and also is issued by an organization under the Railway Ministry which is supervised by Mr Ashvini Vaishnaw who is also the cabinet minister for IT.
Naturally we should therefore expect a vehement opposition from the Privacy Activists far larger than in the UIDAI case. But at present the MeitY has also withdrawn the PDPB 2019 and created a perceptional vacuum regarding the availability of law in India for data protection. (P.S: I call this vacuum “Perceptional” since ITA 2000 continues to exist at present and Section 43A continues to apply).
Will the Government be capable of standing upto the opposition and justify the tender? or withdraw it is the question.
Already there is one report that suggests that the tender may be withdrawn.
Kindly peruse the following articles:
- IRCTC plans to sell user data, seeks Rs 1000 crore in revenue, floats tender
- IRCTC to mothball monetization of data over privacy concerns: Report
However this would be a good case for academic debate and we should discuss this in the interest of creating “Data Protection Jurisprudence”.
We shall therefore analyse the issue in greater detail in the continuation of this article.
Watch out for the continued article..
Naavi
