The Indian government has approved data protection bill to be passed in the parliament as a step to implement its data privacy laws.  “The protection of personal data is a very important subject globally,” Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar told a news conference after a cabinet meeting. “How that will be done in India and how work will progress keeping India’s interest and people’s interest in mind, this is what this bill is about.”

The Personal Data Protection bill, drafted by a panel headed by a former Supreme Court judge and submitted to the government last year, is key for how firms including global tech giants Amazon, Facebook, Alphabet’s Google and others process, store and transfer Indian consumers’ data.

India’s banking regulator last year directed foreign firms such as Mastercard and Visa to store their payments data locally for “unfettered supervisory access”. It later clarified that transactions made in India could be processed outside of the country but the related data should be brought back for local storage within 24 hours.

In a first, the bill proposes social media platforms to create a mechanism so that for “every user who registers their service from India or uses their service from India, a voluntary verifiable account mechanism has to be made", said a senior government official.

The provision puts the onus of creating the mechanism on the company. The provision is largely aimed at checking social media trolling.

The bill categorizes data into three categories—critical, sensitive and general. Sensitive data—financial, health, sexual orientation, biometrics, transgender status, religious or political beliefs and affiliation—can be stored only in India. However, data can be processed outside India with explicit consent, the official cited above said.

In line with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the government last year introduced a draft personal data protection bill to regulate the use of an individual’s data by the government and private companies. Currently, there are no laws on the use of personal data and preventing its misuse, although the Supreme Court upheld the right to privacy as a fundamental right .