A data fiduciary penalised by the Data Protection Board under the DPDP Act 2023 can appeal the order to the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT) within 60 days of the order. The appeal must set out the grounds — such as procedural error, disproportionate penalty, or factual dispute — supported by the record built during the Board's inquiry. A further appeal from a TDSAT decision lies to the Supreme Court. Filing on time and building on a well-documented original response are the two biggest factors in a successful appeal.
If the Data Protection Board has imposed a penalty on your organisation, here is exactly how the appeal process to TDSAT works, and what you need to prepare.
An appeal to TDSAT is not a fresh hearing of the entire matter from scratch — it reviews whether the Data Protection Board's order was correctly arrived at. Common grounds include procedural irregularities during the Board's inquiry, a penalty that is disproportionate to the nature and severity of the violation given the fiduciary's remediation efforts, or a genuine factual dispute where the Board's finding does not match the evidence on record.
Because appeals are reviewed against the record the Board built during its inquiry, the strength of a company's original show cause notice response has a direct bearing on how strong its appeal can be. This is why Niti Bharat treats the initial response and the appeal strategy as connected — decisions made when a notice first arrives shape the options available later.
The DPDP Act sets a 60-day window from the date of the Board's order to file an appeal with TDSAT. Within that window, a fiduciary needs to finalise its grounds, assemble supporting documentation, and prepare the appeal petition — a process that realistically requires several weeks of legal and compliance work, not something to start in the final days. Missing the window generally forecloses the appeal absent a specific condonation of delay being granted.
Companies penalised under the DPDP Act — with amounts ranging up to ₹50 crore for general obligation failures and up to ₹250 crore for the most serious security safeguard failures — should engage legal and compliance support immediately upon receiving the order, not after the appeal deadline is close. Niti Bharat's DPDP Penalty Mitigation Playbook is built to help companies move quickly and methodically through this window.
A step-by-step PDF covering the 60-day appeal window, what documentation TDSAT will expect, and how to structure your grounds of appeal.
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