Geospatial bill tweak soon?
NEW DELHI: As the Centre gets ready to study suggestions received on the draft Geospatial Information Regulation Bill, which proposes up to Rs 100 crore fine or seven years' imprisonment for wrong depiction of India's map, home ministry sources indicated it may agree to "sensible" suggestions to improve upon its provisions."We will go through the feedback we have received on the draft bill, and if there are any sensible suggestions, they will be agreed to. While we may not scrap the bill altogether, as there is clearly a need to regulate geospatial information, we may alter it by bit or majorly, depending on suggestions," said a ministry official.
The home ministry had uploaded the draft bill on its website on May 4, inviting comments and suggestions within 30 days. With expiry of the June 3 deadline for submitting comments on the bill, slammed by public policy experts for its vague wording and harsh penalties, the home ministry's internal security division will now compile and evaluate the suggestions received from various stakeholders.
The home ministry, said an official, will adopt a flexible approach while vetting the final draft to be put up before the Union Cabinet. Sources suggested that valid points or criticism will be looked into and improvements made, wherever possible, to make the bill more reasonable, realistic and easy to implement.
The draft Geospatial Information Regulation Bill, 2016, which exempts government bodies, lays out regulation of acquisition, publishing, and dissemination of maps and geospatial data. It proposes to do this through a licensing regime where a 'security vetting authority' will approve and license maps. Violation of the law, where "wrong" or unlicensed maps or geospatial data are depicted or shared can attract fines ranging from Rs 10 lakh to Rs 100 crore and/or a jail term of up to seven years.
Experts say this would have direct consequences for various businesses that use location data - say cab services like Uber or Ola, or navigation maps like Google Maps. It could even impact sharing of maps on a smaller scale, as every created map of any part of the country falls into the purview of the draft bill.