After a leaked trove of internal Uber documents revealed that the ride-hailing platform allegedly broke laws and secretly lobbied governments to expand globally, Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar on Wednesday said the Centre is planning tougher rules to tame Big Tech and social media platforms operating in India. “India will also have new laws and regulations... Whether there will be structurally new laws, amendments to old laws, additional rules and directions...all of the above.”

According to The Guardian report, the leaked files show how senior Uber executives ordered the use of a “kill switch” to stop police and regulators accessing sensitive data during raids on its offices in India and other nations. “In some ways, the revelations only confirm that in many cases, the Big Tech firms are, in a sense, gaming the system, and most importantly, the customers,” he noted. India has drafted new IT Rules, 2021 to fix more responsibility on social media intermediaries and a personal data protection bill is also in the pipeline.