The Centre on Wednesday said it had no intention of curbing journalistic freedom, guaranteed by the Indian Constitution, and was open to discussions on concerns editors may have about the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) law, which is nearing commencement.Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw invited editorial leaders for an open discussion on the issue and said the government was open to suggestions that could address their concerns.“Our intentions are absolutely clear. Journalistic freedom is guaranteed by the Constitution and stays safeguarded. The DPDP law stems from the Supreme Court judgment on the Right to Privacy and it was deliberated on in detail. Journalistic freedom stays intact,” Vaishnaw said.The government said it was open to any solution proposed by journalists.The assurance comes a day after the Supreme Court issued notices to the Union Ministry of Law and Justice and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) on a petition filed by the Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA), challenging the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, and the DPDP Rules, 2025.Passed by Parliament in August 2023, the DPDP Act is India’s first comprehensive law on digital personal data protection. It requires any entity processing personal data, termed a “data fiduciary”, to do so either with the consent of the individual concerned or for a limited set of “legitimate uses” listed in Section 7 of the Act.Section 7 lists the legitimate uses for which a data fiduciary may process personal data of an individual for the specified purpose for which the data principal has voluntarily provided her personal data to the data fiduciary, and in respect of which she has not indicated to the data fiduciary that she does not consent to the use of her personal data. A breach can attract penalties of up to Rs 250 crore.MeitY notified the accompanying DPDP Rules, 2025, on November 13, 2025, with implementation staggered over 18 months.The DPDP Rules, 2025, lay down how consent, notices and breach reporting are to work in practice.Among the most controversial provisions is Rule 23, framed under Section 36 of the Act, which allows the Centre, acting through an authorised person, to require any data fiduciary or intermediary to furnish information and also bar them from disclosing that such a request was made.The Digital News Publishers Association has questioned Section 44(3) of the DPDP Act. News organisations are primarily aggrieved by the absence of any exception for news reporting either among the legitimate uses in Section 7 or the exemptions in Section 17 wherein personal data protection does not apply.These include legal claims where personal data is processed to enforce a legal right or claim, as well as judicial and regulatory functions in which courts, tribunals or legally authorised bodies process personal data as necessary to perform their judicial, quasi-judicial, regulatory or supervisory functions. The 2018, 2019 and 2021 versions of the personal data protection law had included such an exemption.The petitioner association contended that the absence of an exception for media outlets meant a reporter writing about a person would first need that person’s consent.In a landmark verdict in the Justice KS Puttaswamy (retd) case, the Supreme Court on August 24, 2017, declared the right to privacy a fundamental right under the Constitution.“The right to privacy is protected as an intrinsic part of the right to life and personal liberty under Article 21 and as a part of the freedoms guaranteed by Part III (which deals with Fundamental Rights) of the Constitution,” a nine-judge Constitution Bench headed by the then Chief Justice of India JS Khehar had ruled in a unanimous verdict.However, the Bench had clarified that, like other fundamental rights, the right to privacy was not absolute and any encroachment would have to withstand the touchstone of permissible restrictions. A law to survive a challenge on the ground of violation of Article 21 must be fair, just and reasonable, it had noted.