A company can comply with India’s Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act without obtaining consent for every processing activity.
Section 7 of the DPDP Act permits certain legitimate uses of personal data without separate consent.
Examples include:
- Processing employee data for employment-related purposes.
- Responding to a medical emergency.
- Complying with certain legal obligations.
- Using personal data voluntarily provided by someone for a specified purpose, provided they haven’t indicated that they don’t consent.
But these are specific legal grounds, not blanket exemptions.
The takeaway: Before building a consent mechanism, identify whether the processing actually requires consent.
Sometimes the correct compliance decision is to rely on an applicable legitimate use.
This article is general information, not legal advice.