Earlier this year, the Ministry of Home Affairs to the Government of India put out a draft bill for comment - the Geospatial Information Regulation Bill, 2016.
As an organisation, one of IFF’s core areas is promoting an Internet which preserves freedom for users, designers, scholars and entrepreneurs. Such freedom today is being exercised by most users to generate and contribute geospatial information. Every Indian today with a smartphone is a cartographer who is helping map and digitise India. We believe this will be negatively impacted by the Geospatial Bill. In order to provide our specific inputs and explain our concerns, IFF participated in the consultation opened by the Ministry of Home Affairs on the Geospatial Bill and filed comments on June 3. A copy of our filing can be accessed here.
Along with specific comments on the contents of the draft Bill itself, we also called upon the Ministry of Home Affairs to further the spirit of transparency by making all submissions made to it on the draft Bill public and allow for further inputs if it was to continue in its
Despite our support for the process adopted for consultation we are still deeply concerned by the intent and phrasing of the Geospatial Bill, and believe it should be withdrawn immediately.