Will not rush in bringing Digital India Act

The rules to implement Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act was released last week for stakeholder consultation.

- By S KRISHNAN, SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF ELECTRONICS & IT

However, the government is not expected to bring the draft Digital India Act and regulatory framework around AI in a hurry.

Krishnan, secretary, ministry of electronics and IT (MeitY), in an interview with Srinivasan Grover, said the existing legal framework can handle AI and intermediaries regulations is satisfactory at the moment. Excerpts:

What will be MeitY’s focus in 2025?

The year 2024 has been satisfactory for the ministry. We approved four projects under the semiconductor mission. We launched the AI mission. Significant progress on the components scheme has been made, which will be the early harvest for 2025. We are looking at one or two more schemes in the new India Semiconductor mission. Besides, full grounding for IT Hardware PLI and the AI mission need to happen. We are looking to put out new guidelines for research and development to make sure that the new technologies that are developed in labs are actually getting into use and we are able to handle that interface better. We will be seeing more work in internet governance, internet resilience and cybersecurity space this year.

Do you think key areas such as AI regulations, new intermediary frameworks, etc will take more time?