DNA Technology (Use and Application) Regulation Bill, 2019

The DNA Technology (Use and Application) Regulation Bill, 2019 was introduced in the Lok Sabha on 8 July 2019 by India's Ministry of Science and Technology, building on a decade of antecedent drafts dating to the 2003 effort by the Department of Biotechnology and the Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (CDFD), Hyderabad. Earlier iterations circulated as the Human DNA Profiling Bill (2007 and 2012 drafts) and the DNA Based Technology (Use and Regulation) Bill, 2017, the last of which lapsed with the dissolution of the 16th Lok Sabha. The 2019 Bill drew partly on a 2017 Law Commission of India report (the 271st Report) that examined the constitutional and procedural safeguards required for forensic DNA use. Its stated object was to establish an institutional framework for the regulation of DNA testing for identification of persons in criminal matters, paternity disputes, immigration, organ transplantation, and the identification of missing persons and disaster victims.

The Bill's core mechanics rested on two institutions. First, it proposed a DNA Regulatory Board as the apex body, chaired by an eminent person from biological sciences and composed of members from forensic, investigative, legal, and scientific domains, empowered to accredit DNA laboratories, frame procedures for collection and storage, and set quality standards. No laboratory could undertake DNA analysis for the purposes of the Act without Board accreditation. Second, the Bill mandated the creation of a National DNA Data Bank and Regional DNA Data Banks to receive DNA profiles from accredited laboratories. The data banks were to maintain distinct indices: a crime scene index, a suspects' or undertrials' index, an offenders' index, a missing persons' index, and an unknown deceased persons' index. Profiles entering these indices would be cross-compared to generate investigative leads.

On consent and removal, the Bill contained calibrated provisions. Written consent was required for collecting samples from a person who was neither arrested nor a suspect in an offence carrying punishment exceeding seven years; for arrested persons in offences below that threshold, consent could be dispensed with on a magistrate's order. The Bill provided for removal of a profile from the crime scene index where it was matched or no longer needed, and for removal of a suspect's or undertrial's profile on the basis of a court order or written request following the conclusion of proceedings. Penalties were prescribed for unauthorised disclosure, use of DNA information for purposes beyond the Act, and unlawful access to the data bank, with imprisonment and fines specified for breaches.

The 2019 Bill was referred to the Department-related Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science and Technology, Environment, Forests and Climate Change, chaired by Jairam Ramesh, which tabled its report on 3 February 2021. That committee's deliberations were notable for recorded dissent: members questioned whether caste, religion, or community-linked profiling could result from the data bank's structure and whether the inclusion of an undertrials' and suspects' index, before conviction, was constitutionally sustainable. The Bill ultimately lapsed without enactment. Subsequent enactment of the Criminal Procedure (Identification) Act, 2022, which authorises collection of biological samples and other measurements from arrested and convicted persons, overlapped substantially with the DNA Bill's ambit and reshaped the policy landscape.

The Bill must be distinguished from adjacent instruments. It is not the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, India's general data protection statute, though privacy critiques of the DNA Bill anticipated the principles later codified there following the Supreme Court's judgment in Justice K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2017), which recognised informational privacy as a fundamental right under Article 21. Nor is it equivalent to the Criminal Procedure (Identification) Act, 2022, which governs the taking of measurements but does not itself establish a regulatory board or a national DNA index system with statutory matching protocols. The DNA Bill was narrower in trigger but deeper in infrastructure, contemplating a permanent, searchable genetic database governed by a dedicated regulator.

Controversies centred on three faultlines. Critics, including members of the Standing Committee and civil-liberties scholars, argued that storing DNA profiles in suspects' and undertrials' indices before conviction risked function creep and surveillance, and that DNA, unlike a fingerprint, reveals heritable and familial information implicating third parties who never consented. Concerns were raised about the absence, at the time of the Bill, of a comprehensive data-protection law, leaving the proposed data bank without an overarching statutory privacy floor. Questions about laboratory capacity, chain-of-custody integrity, and the reliability of partial or degraded samples in Indian forensic conditions further dampened legislative momentum. The 2022 Act's passage rendered fresh movement on a standalone DNA statute uncertain.

For the working practitioner — the policy researcher, the civil-services aspirant preparing General Studies Paper III, or the desk officer tracking biotechnology governance — the 2019 Bill remains a reference text for the architecture of forensic DNA regulation and the unresolved tension between investigative efficacy and genetic privacy. Its lapse illustrates how India's privacy jurisprudence, crystallised in Puttaswamy, now conditions any framework involving sensitive biometric data, and how overlapping legislation such as the Criminal Procedure (Identification) Act, 2022 can absorb a bill's policy objectives without resolving its safeguard deficits. Understanding the Bill is therefore essential to evaluating the next iteration of DNA governance India eventually adopts.