Following pushback over the course of this year from disability rights activists, the Electronics and Information Technology Ministry has made changes to the Digital Personal Data Protection Rules, 2025, to separate persons with disabilities from a rule that, in a draft, clubbed them with children for the sake of consent by a guardian.
While disability rights activists, who referred to the clubbing as the “infantilisation” of persons with disabilities, hailed this change in the notified rules, they said their concerns over the provisions remain. The notified rules do not contain illustrations on implementation to cover a range of instances where disabled people may or may not be able to use the Internet freely. Further, the language of the 2023 DPDP Act continues to group children and persons with disabilities together.
Editorial | Too little, much later: on the Digital Personal Data Protection Rules, 2025
The DPDP Act, 2023, and the rules significantly restrict what minors can do online, such as setting up a social media account, without a parent’s consent. In the draft rules, this requirement was spelled out in detail in a section that included persons with disabilities, causing concern among disability rights groups. They argued that the Act and the draft unnecessarily required guardian consent for all types of data collection by websites.
