MeitY’s DPDP (Removal of Difficulties) Order, 2026 explained: verifiable guardian consent and Significant Data Fiduciary data audits

In October 2026, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology notified the Digital Personal Data Protection (Removal of Difficulties) Order, 2026 in the Official Gazette, exercising the Central Government's statutory power to remove difficulties in giving effect to the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 within three years from commencement. While concise in length, the October 2026 Order resolves two drafting ambiguities that legal, product and compliance teams had flagged since the statute was enacted: first, aligning the phrasing around verifiable consent from parents and lawful guardians when processing the personal data of children and persons with disabilities; and second, replacing the generic word "audit" with the precise statutory term "data audit" in the periodic compliance obligations of Significant Data Fiduciaries.

Why the Central Government issued the Removal of Difficulties Order, 2026

The DPDP Act empowers the Central Government, if any difficulty arises in giving effect to the provisions of the statute, to make provisions not inconsistent with the Act by a published order as appear necessary or expedient for removing the difficulty, provided no such order is made after the expiry of three years from the commencement of the Act and every order is laid before each House of Parliament. As enterprises, ministries and sector regulators prepared their systems ahead of the 13 November 2026 Consent Manager registration milestone and the 13 May 2027 enforcement date for substantive Data Fiduciary duties, two textual seams between the parent Act and the DPDP Rules, 2025 required formal alignment.

First, in the clause governing verifiable consent before processing any personal data of a child or a person with disability who has a lawful guardian, the parent Act's cross-references between parental consent for children under 18 and guardian consent for persons with disabilities needed grammatical precision so that the verifiable consent mechanisms prescribed in the Rules apply cleanly to both categories. Second, in the clause requiring a Significant Data Fiduciary to appoint an independent data auditor, one sub-clause referred to conducting periodic "audit" rather than periodic "data audit", creating unnecessary debate over whether general financial or statutory corporate audits overlapped with the independent privacy audit regime.

How the October 2026 Order clarifies guardian consent and Significant Data Fiduciary data audits

By issuing the Digital Personal Data Protection (Removal of Difficulties) Order, 2026, the government locked both provisions into exact alignment with the DPDP Rules, 2025:

What lawful guardian verification requires in practice

For hospitals, diagnostic labs, banks, insurers, schools and digital platforms that serve individuals with disabilities who have a lawful guardian, the DPDP Rules set out a specific verification standard. Unlike parental verification for a child—which relies on checking that the parent is an adult through existing reliable records or a Digital Locker virtual token—verifying a lawful guardian for a person with disability requires checking that the guardian was appointed by a court of law, by a designated authority under the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, or by a local level committee under the National Trust for Welfare of Persons with Autism, Cerebral Palsy, Mental Retardation and Multiple Disabilities Act, 1999.

Our view: five steps to update your compliance programme for the 2026 Order

In our view, engineering, legal and compliance teams should reflect the Digital Personal Data Protection (Removal of Difficulties) Order, 2026 in their readiness work before 13 May 2027 through five steps:

1. Update your internal statutory reference pack and board briefing notes to record the October 2026 Removal of Difficulties Order alongside the DPDP Act, 2023, commencement notification G.S.R. 843(E) and the DPDP Rules, 2025.
2. Separate your onboarding workflows for minors under 18 (adult parent verification via existing records or Digital Locker tokens) from workflows for persons with disabilities acting through a lawful guardian (verification of court, designated-authority or local-level-committee guardianship orders).
3. If your organisation operates at a scale or sensitivity likely to be notified as a Significant Data Fiduciary, scope your internal readiness checklist around an annual independent data audit and an annual Data Protection Impact Assessment.
4. Ensure your consent management, encryption, Data Processor contract register and minimum one-year log retention pipelines produce verifiable evidence ready for an independent data auditor.
5. Keep your 90-day Data Principal rights and grievance desk accessible to parents and lawful guardians exercising access, correction, erasure or withdrawal rights on behalf of a child or person with disability.