Privacy in the Portal: An Analysis of ODR Compliance under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023

The rapid growth of the dispute resolution from the courtrooms towards digital platforms has caused a drastic change in the manner of dispute resolution of the litigants in India. It gives the rise of online Disputes Resolution popularly known as ODR. Online Dispute Resolution (“ODR”) sites are exposed to vast quantities of personal, financial and sometimes even confidential information, and there are acute concerns about confidentiality, consent and informational self-determination. This article reviews privacy architecture in the context of ODR in India in the background of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, and provides a background to the constitutional principles established by the Supreme Court in Justice K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India, and developed in subsequent cases. What it does do is explain the development of ODR mechanisms, highlight the main privacy concerns of digital adjudication and assess how well the obligations of the DPDP Act are attuned to the realities of arbitration, mediation and online negotiation. The article also provides the overview of the judiciary's contribution to digital privacy jurisprudence and argues that, notwithstanding the DPDP Act's enactment, ODR platforms in India continue to face significant compliance gaps relating to consent architecture, data minimisation, cross-border transfers, and algorithmic transparency. It concludes with a set of doctrinal and policy recommendations directed at regulators, ODR service providers, and the judiciary, with the aim of embedding privacy-by-design principles into the next generation of India's digital justice infrastructure.