Strengthening AI Governance Through Techno-legal Framework January 2026
A white paper published by the Office of the Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India proposes a techno-legal framework for governing Artificial Intelligence (AI) in India—one that integrates legal obligations directly into technical system design rather than relying solely on post-hoc regulation. Recognizing that AI systems are adaptive, scalable, and borderless, the paper argues that traditional “command-and-control” laws are insufficient to address emerging risks such as privacy breaches, bias, deepfakes, misinformation, security vulnerabilities, and accountability gaps.
India’s current AI governance relies on a combination of baseline laws (IT Act, BNS 2023, DPDP Act 2023), sectoral regulations (RBI, SEBI, ICMR), and voluntary standards (ISO/IEC 42001, fairness assessment standards). While these provide safeguards, they are largely reactive and not designed for AI’s full lifecycle. The paper therefore advocates a lifecycle-based governance model, covering data collection, data-in-use protection, model training and assessment, safe AI inference, and agentic AI systems.
The techno-legal approach embeds governance “by design” through technical safeguards such as privacy-enhancing technologies, consent-based data access, audit logs, impact assessments, bias testing, red-teaming, runtime monitoring, and agent-level controls. This enables transparency, explainability, provability, accountability, and scalable enforcement, while remaining pro-innovation. Larger or higher-risk AI deployments are expected to meet stricter governance and technical control requirements.
Institutionally, the paper proposes operationalizing AI governance through coordinated mechanisms including an AI Governance Group (AIGG), a Technology and Policy Expert Committee (TPEC), an AI Safety Institute (AISI), a National AI Incident Database, and voluntary industry commitments supported by incentives. These bodies would enable coordination across regulators, continuous risk monitoring, evidence-based policy updates, and global alignment.
The paper highlights India’s advantage in leveraging Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI)—such as Aadhaar, DigiLocker, UPI, and DEPA—to scale techno-legal compliance through interoperable, consent-driven, and auditable systems. While acknowledging trade-offs (e.g., privacy vs. model performance, fairness vs. data minimization), the paper emphasizes documented, risk-aware decision-making rather than one-size-fits-all rules.
Overall, the white paper positions techno-legal governance as a “law-plus” model that balances innovation with safety, strengthens public trust, enables global adoption of Indian AI systems, and aligns AI development with constitutional values and developmental priorities.
