Representative image. | Photo credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto
Following opposition from disability rights activists earlier this year, the Department of Electronics and Information Technology made changes to the Digital Personal Data Protection Rules 2025 that separate persons with disabilities from a rule that in the draft links them with children for guardian consent.
While disability rights activists, who have described the clubs as “infantilizing” people with disabilities, welcomed the change in the announced rules, they said their concerns about the provisions remained. The promulgated rules do not include implementation illustrations that would cover the range of situations in which people with disabilities may or may not be able to freely use the Internet. The language of the DPDP Act of 2023 further groups together children and persons with disabilities.
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The DPDP Act 2023 and rules severely restrict what minors can do online, such as setting up a social media account, without parental consent. The draft rules detailed this requirement in a section that included persons with disabilities, raising concerns among disability rights groups. They argued that the law and proposal unnecessarily require guardianship consent for all types of data collection by websites.
Nipun Malhotra of the Nipman Foundation, which is pushing for changes to the law and rules, said it was a “major victory” to separate the sections governing consent mechanisms for children and people with disabilities. “The restrictions on behavioral tracking, tracking and targeted advertising that apply to children no longer apply to people with disabilities. These are useful features for people with disabilities,” he said.
However, Mr. Malhotra noted that concerns remained regarding the practicalities of implementing the rules and the language in the principal Act where children and persons with disabilities were included in the same section. “How the rules will be implemented and what will be clarified in due course is anyone’s guess,” he said.
The section of the rules that deals with consent to children’s data includes several illustrations of the different scenarios in which consent should be obtained, along with a schedule that exempts and clarifies those requirements. While the Sections Department has clarified that these restrictions will not apply to people with disabilities, the Disabilities Section has no illustrations to capture the nuances of how guardianship works, a key problem with the draft rules, as noted in a report by policy think tank PACTA and NGO Saksham Disability.
Another issue raised by activists and civil society organizations was that the draft rules did not clarify which disability guardianship law – either the National Trust for Welfare of Persons with Autism, Cerebral Palsy, Mental Retardation and Multiple Disabilities Act of 1999 or the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act of 2016 – would be considered for implementation.
Saksham’s report raised concerns in this regard, given that under the NZ Act, the need for guardianship is partly determined by “capacity to make decisions”, a term not clearly defined in the 1999 Act. According to activists, this is not in line with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, while guardianship under the RPWD Act is.
He further noted that small surveys showed that few people with disabilities were aware of the laws under which their guardianship was registered.
The notified rules, while creating a separate section, left the language in the section for persons with disabilities unchanged. Section 11 of the notified rules continues to provide for execution in cases of guardianship both under the Act on NZ and under the Act on RPWD.
Mr Malhotra said the rules define a “specified power” in relation to guardianship as governed by the RPWD Act 2016. “But there remains a discrepancy because further in the definition of disabled, the rules also provide for persons with physical disabilities. This is inconsistent as guardianship under the RPWD Act does not provide for guardians for persons with physical disabilities.”
Published – 18 Nov 2025 22:05 IST
