Right To Privacy: The Next Step Supreme Court On Data Privacy On Social Media

A personal data breach can create immediate legal, operational, and reputational consequences for an organisation. Under India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (DPDP Act) and the Digital Personal Data Protection Rules, 2025 (DPDP Rules), specific obligations have been prescribed for Data Fiduciaries following a personal data breach. While organisations may already have broader data protection and cybersecurity measures in place, breach notification requires a distinct and time-sensitive response. The DPDP framework requires communication both to affected Data Principals and to the Data Protection Board of India.

India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (DPDP Act) introduces a relatively permissive framework for the cross-border transfer of personal data from India. Unlike the European Union’s GDPR, which relies extensively on adequacy decisions and prescribed transfer safeguards, the DPDP framework adopts a negative-list approach: international transfers are generally permitted, subject to restrictions that may be notified by the Central Government.

India’s data protection framework has moved from legislation to implementation. With the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (“DPDP Act”) and the Digital Personal Data Protection Rules, 2025 (“DPDP Rules”) now notified, organizations processing personal data in India need to reassess how long they retain personal data, why they retain it, and how they ultimately delete or anonymize it.

India's digital privacy framework has now moved from legislative intent to staged implementation.

India’s data protection regime has moved well past the discussion stage. With the Digital Personal Data Protection Rules, 2025 (“DPDP Rules”) notified by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (“MeitY”) on 13 November 2025, the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (“DPDP Act”) now has a defined implementation roadmap, and 2026 is the year businesses should be using to prepare for substantive compliance.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology ("MEITY") has now formally notified the Digital Personal Data Protection Rules, 2025 ("DPDP Rules" or "Rules") on 13 November 2025.

India’s data protection landscape is undergoing its most significant shift in over a decade. The Information Technology (Reasonable Security Practices and Procedures and Sensitive Personal Data or Information) Rules, 2011 (“SPDI Rules”), have long formed the core of personal data protection obligations under the Information Technology Act, 2000 (“IT Act“) for body corporates handling sensitive personal data or information.

India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act introduces a mandatory Consent Manager Framework operational from November 2026, requiring organizations processing personal data to integrate with registered intermediary platforms that enable individuals to manage consent across multiple services. With penalties reaching INR 250 crore per violation and implementation timelines spanning 12-18 months, enterprises face critical infrastructure modernization requirements before the May 2027 full compliance deadline.

AI regulation does not always arrive in the form of a dedicated AI statute. More often, it enters through privacy law. On April 7, 2026, the Japanese Cabinet approved a bill to amend Japan’s Act on the Protection of Personal Information (“APPI”). The Diet passed the amendment on July 10, 2026, and it was promulgated on July 17, 2026 as Act No. 56 of 2026; the amendment is now enacted but not yet in force, with its main provisions taking effect on a date to be fixed by Cabinet order no later than mid-2028.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology ("MeitY") on 14.11.2025, published multiple notifications numbered G.S.R. 843(E) , G.S.R. 844(E) , G.S.R. 845(E) and G.S.R. 846(E).

On June 3, 2026, the Supreme Court of India’s AI Committee released preliminary draft of the Regulations for Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Courts, 2026 (“The Draft”). This marks a shift from scattered experiments with AI tools for translation, transcription, research and case management. With over 93,000 pending matters as of March 2026, the guidelines aim to ease processes for officials and citizens. AI could help reduce backlogs through automated cause-list preparation, transcription, research, and defect scrutiny, but its use also raises serious concerns.

When an artificial intelligence system is trained on copyrighted news content, and later answers a user’s question using what it learned, has the law been broken? On 24th July 2026, the Delhi High Court answered that question, at least for now. In ANI Media Pvt. Ltd. v. Open AI OpCo LLC, Justice Amit Bansal declined to grant an interim injunction against OpenAI, holding, on a prima facie, interim stage view, that the company’s use of ANI’s news content to train its large language models (“LLMs”) falls within the fair dealing exception under Section 52(1)(a) of the Copyright Act, 1957

A gift deed is a legal document that facilitates the voluntary transfer of property from one person (the donor) to another (the donee) without any exchange of money or consideration.

The Hon'ble Supreme Court held that, the following twin test needs to be satisfied for an establishment to seek exemption from Section 16 (1) of the Act.

The change is effected through two instruments: the Food Safety and Standards (Licensing and Registration of Food Businesses) Amendment Regulations, 2026, notified via gazette on 10th March, 2026[1] (the “Amendment Regulations”), and a subsequent implementation order dated 13th March, 2026[2] (the “Order”) issued by FSSAI directing all licensing authorities to apply the revised thresholds with effect from 1st April, 2026.

In mid-September 2026, government sources said Meta Platforms’ Indian operations, Facebook, Instagram and Threads, should no longer be viewed merely as an “internet intermediary” but should also be treated as a “service provider,” arguing that the company’s monetised algorithms actively decide what content gets amplified, distributed and shown to whom. That is a government position, not a new statutory classification, and this article returns to that distinction below.

Cybersecurity regulation in India has, until now, largely spoken to the entity that suffers the breach. The 2022 CERT-In Directions issued under Section 70B of the Information Technology Act, 2000 fixed a six-hour reporting clock on the organisation that detects an incident. The new Guidelines flip the lens onto the entity upstream of that breach, the OEM or technology provider that built the product in the first place. For the first time, vendors supplying software, firmware, cloud platforms, or APIs into India carry direct, time-bound, and independently verifiable obligations of their own and not obligations that are merely passed through a customer contract, but obligations CERT-In itself may enforce.

On February 10, 2026, the Central Government notified the amended Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Amendment Rules, 2026 (hereinafter referred to as “IT Amendment Rules”), marking a significant shift in how India regulates Artificial Intelligence (AI) and synthetically generated content online.

India’s new labour code framework, comprising four consolidated codes enacted between 2019 and 2020, represents the most comprehensive overhaul of employment laws since independence. Among these, the Code on Wages, 2019 (hereinafter referred to as the “Code”) amalgamates the Payment of Wages Act, 1936; the Minimum Wages Act, 1948; the Payment of Bonus Act, 1965; and the Equal Remuneration Act, 1976, into a single, unified enactment.

For most of the last decade, e-commerce compliance in India has been a question of what a platform says: the disclosures on a product page, the terms in a policy, the identity of a seller. The Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) (Amendment) Rules, 2026 change the question. They reach into how a platform is built and how it behaves, its ranking logic, its discount displays, its interface design and its use of consumer data, and make those matters of compliance rather than of commercial discretion. Notified on 9 September 2026 and effective from 1 January 2027, the amendments give businesses a defined, and short, runway to adapt.