The Supreme Court on Thursday sought a response from the Centre on a plea challenging the constitutional validity of several provisions of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023.

A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul M Pancholi agreed to hear the petition and issued the notice to the Centre.

"Issue notice, returnable on March 23," the bench said, tagging the petition with a pending plea raising a similar issue.

The petition also sought a direction to the Centre to incorporate and notify a specific and proportionate exemption under the 2023 Act and the Digital Personal Data Protection Rules, 2025, for processing of personal data for journalistic, editorial, investigative and public interest reporting purposes, including protection of journalistic sources.

On February 16, the top court agreed to examine a batch of pleas challenging the constitutional validity of several provisions of the 2023 Act.

It, however, refused to grant an interim stay on the impugned provisions, saying "by an interim order, it will not thwart a regime introduced by Parliament unless we hear the case".

The pleas raised concerns over the "fiduciary" clauses, which allow the Central government to requisition data from any data fiduciary at its discretion.