A parliamentary panel has called top officials of the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) and is likely to investigate a tender it floated to hire a consultant to monetise its passenger and freight customer data with the aim to generate revenue up to Rs 1,000 crore.
The IRCTC has more than 10 crore users, of which 7.5 crore are active users. It is reportedly said by the IRCTC officials that the tender will be withdrawn considering the fact that the government has withdrawn the Data Protection Bill from Parliament.
According to the IRCTC tender document, the data to be studied will include information captured by the transporter’s various public facing applications such as “name, age, mobile number, gender, address, e-mail ID, class of journey, payment mode, login or password” and other details.
As per the notice of the meeting issued by the Lok Sabha Secretariat, the officials will depose before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology regarding the issue of citizens’ data security and privacy.
On the same day, representatives of Twitter India will also appear before the panel for the same issue. The Tharoor-led panel has been holding meeting with various stakeholders including tech companies, social media firms, ministries and other regulators on the issue of citizens’ data security and privacy.
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