The Human DNA Profiling Bill, which the government wanted to introduce in the monsoon session of parliament in 2015 but didn’t, has reared its head again. The Centre informed the Supreme Court last week that it has been preparing to introduce a newer version of the Bill in parliament, titled ‘The DNA Based Technology (Use and Regulation) Bill, 2017’. Also in July, the Law Commission of India published the document on its website as part of a longer report on the issue.
“The Department of Biotechnology will now begin work for its further progress through the law ministry and Union cabinet,” K. VijayRaghavan, secretary of the department (DBT), told The Wire.
Called the DNA Bill for short, it seeks to introduce a set of legislative provisions that will allow licensed laboratories, police stations and courts around the country to collect DNA samples from certain groups of people, analyse them for unique information about the persons’ identity, store them in a ‘databank’, use them as evidence during trials and to identify missing or unidentified persons.
The July 2015 version of the Bill was criticised for arbitrarily assigning wide-ranging discretionary powers, for not possessing the necessary privacy and data-security safeguards and for refusing to submit to a higher authority that could hold its administrators accountable. As a result, the DBT, the driving force behind the Bill, drew up an amended version a few months later. However, the new Law Commission draft – also backed by the DBT – is markedly different from the two previous versions, although some similarities have persisted.