Public-interest institution

India's independent forum for digital personal data protection

Standards, interpretation guidance, and professional capacity for the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023.

Read the standards About the Forum
One personal data record The subject of the Act
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The Act, layered over a single record. Six frameworks make each layer implementable.

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Legislation is not implementation

The gap the Forum works in

The Act states obligations. It does not state procedures, competencies or evidence. Those are the three things an organisation is actually audited on.

The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 sets obligations for every organisation that handles the personal data of people in India. It does not say how those obligations are met in practice. That work, the slow work of interpretation, procedure and capability, falls to the institutions around the law.

The Forum exists to do that work in public. It develops frameworks that translate statutory obligations into implementable practice, publishes its interpretation openly, and builds the professional competence the Act assumes but does not create.

Everything the Forum publishes is its reading of the law, not the law. It carries no regulatory force, and it is published in the open precisely so that it can be examined, contested and improved.

Obligation to framework

The clause map

Select an obligation to see which framework carries it. Statutory text is paraphrased.

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How a framework is made

Every framework goes through the same four steps.

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Coverage matrix

Where each framework sits against the Act

Draft mappings
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Primary coverage in the draft Touched, carried by another framework
The stakes

What the Schedule puts at risk

Penalty ceilings per instance under the Schedule to the Act, paraphrased
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Six areas of work

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The chapter series

DPDPA Leadership Conclave

Chapter 01, Mumbai. Expected first week of September 2026. Operationalising DPDPA, who will lead in India's trust era?

Chapter 01 register
DPDPA Leadership Conclave, Mumbai 2026, key visual
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Institutional neutrality

The Forum is independent. It accepts no vendor endorsement, publishes its standards freely, and does not act for any government body. Its governance, funding and conflict-of-interest rules are published on the governance register.

Read the governance commitments
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