Certain clauses of Data Act lend themselves to ‘weaponisation’: PCI

The Press Club of India (PCI) said on Monday (November 24, 2025) that the “ambiguity and open-ended scope” of certain clauses of the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, 2023, “escalates the potential for weaponisation of the law manifold.”

Expressing “anguish” over the manner in which the Digital Personal Data Protection Rules were notified recently, the PCI said it, along with 22 other press bodies, had submitted a Joint Memorandum in June 2025 to MEITY in an attempt to engage with the Union Government on the law.

They “flagged serious lacunae in the DPDP Act, 2023, that impinge upon press freedom and directly hit Article 19 (1).”

“The intention of submitting the Joint Memorandum was two-fold. The first, was to engage with the government in the most constructive and democratic manner to help it come out with a model code of implementation (Rules) that did not strangle the functioning of journalists and media organisations in the world’s largest democracy,” it said.

“The second, was to demonstrate that some of the sections of the DPDP Act, 2023, were riddled with serious ambiguities due to their sweeping definitions and scope. The loosely drafted sections open up numerous possibilities of weaponisation of the law with the purpose of curtailing press freedom,” said the PCI.

“We at no stage asked for repealing the law. We are quite aware of the necessity of a law for protecting personal data of citizens in the digital age,” it said, adding that the press bodies had submitted a set of 35 questions on August 22, 2025, further elaborating the real-world scenarios, for seeking clarification about the application of certain sections.