Balancing Privacy and Competition: Evaluating the Competitive Effects of India's Data Protection Bill.

This article examines the competitive implications of India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2022 (DPDPB) at the intersection of data protection and competition law. It traces the evolution of Indian jurisprudence recognizing competition concerns arising from data privacy, argues that the Competition Commission of India (CCI) should have exclusive jurisdiction over overlapping competition and data protection issues rather than the newly created Data Protection Board (DPB), and highlights the CCI’s comparative advantages in enforcement and remedies. The analysis further identifies potential anti-competitive effects of the DPDPB, including disproportionate compliance costs on smaller firms, challenges to mandatory data sharing as a competition remedy, and the removal of data portability rights, proposing nuanced approaches to address these concerns. Overall, the article contributes a framework for evaluating the DPDPB’s impact on India’s competition landscape and calls for further dialogue on balancing privacy and competition objectives.