India will release a consultation paper on regulating artificial intelligence within 30 days
IA en un minuto newsroom · Editor: Jon Elgezabal
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India expects to have the draft that opens a consultation on how to govern AI ready inside 30 days, Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw announced. The document will deal with safety, inclusion, retraining workers and keeping damage in check. Vaishnaw believes legislation alone falls short and that companies in the sector will carry a large share of the work.
India's Electronics and Information Technology Minister, Ashwini Vaishnaw, said on Thursday, October 8, that the government will release a draft consultation paper on AI regulation within the next 30 days, as reported by Business Standard. He made the announcement at the launch of the World Bank's World Development Report 2026 on the Promise of Artificial Intelligence.
The draft will cover safety and security, a human-first approach, skilling and reskilling, inclusion and restricting harms. According to the minister, that consultation paper will form the basis for AI regulation in the country.
Vaishnaw maintains that AI cannot be regulated just by having a law: the government wants a techno-legal approach, combining rules and technical solutions, and much of the regulation will have to be undertaken by the industry itself. According to Outlook Business, the minister also listed deepfakes (fake content made with AI) and psychological harms arising from AI use among the risks, and said companies would have to shoulder primary responsibility for cybersecurity threats and user safety concerns.
India currently has no unified law on AI: most AI-led tools and services are governed by the Information Technology Act of 2000 or the Information Technology Rules of 2022. Earlier this year, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology set up the Artificial Intelligence Governance and Economic Group (AIGEG), an inter-ministerial body that coordinates AI policy across ministries and sectoral regulators.
Why it matters · analysis and opinion
For now it binds no one: what is coming is a consultation paper, not a rule, and the final text will depend on what comes out of that process. What matters is the model the minister is sketching. Instead of relying on a law alone, India wants to combine rules with technical solutions and place much of the oversight on companies themselves, which would have to answer for the safety of their users. For anyone building or selling AI services in that market, the draft will be the first concrete clue to what will be required of them on deepfakes or psychological harms. Companies with customers or teams in the country have an opening there: the consultation is the moment to submit comments, before the rules are set.
Source: Business Standard · Written with the help of AI: how we make the news
