The right to nominate: making sure your digital accounts are handled after you're gone

At a glance

India’s DPDP Act gives you a right to nominate — you can name another person to exercise your data rights on your behalf if you die or become unable to act for yourself (say, through serious illness). That nominee can then do things like access or delete your personal data with the companies that hold it, instead of your accounts becoming frozen and unreachable. You set it up through the means each company provides.

Educational resource only. This explains the right to nominate under India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (DPDP Act); it is not formal legal advice.

The situation

We all leave a long digital trail — email, cloud storage, financial and health apps, ID documents sitting in service accounts. If something happens to you, families often hit a wall: the data is there, but no one is authorised to reach it, and the accounts simply go dark. The right to nominate is designed to prevent exactly that.

What the right to nominate actually is

You can appoint someone to step into your shoes and exercise your data rights if you can’t.

The DPDP Act gives you a right to nominate (Section 14). It lets you name another individual who can exercise your rights on your behalf in the event of your death or incapacity — incapacity meaning you’re unable to act for yourself, for example due to serious illness or injury. In effect, you’re pre-authorising a trusted person so that, when you can’t act, someone lawfully can.

Why it matters — the “frozen account” problem

Without a nominee, your data can become both exposed and unreachable at the same time.

Think about what’s held across your accounts: Aadhaar and PAN copies, bank and insurance details, health records, personal photos and correspondence. If you’re gone or incapacitated and no one is authorised, two bad things can happen at once — the data keeps sitting with companies indefinitely, while your family can’t access what they legitimately need or ask for it to be cleaned up. Nominating someone turns a stuck situation into an orderly one: a named person can access what’s needed and request deletion of the rest.

How to nominate, step by step

Nomination is set up with the companies that hold your data, through the process each one offers.

1. Decide who. Choose someone you trust to act responsibly with sensitive data — a spouse, family member, or close friend. You can think of them as your data executor.
2. Check each service’s process. Look in a company’s privacy or account settings, or its privacy notice, for how it lets you record a nominee. The exact mechanism is provided by the company (and shaped by the Act’s rules).
3. Record the nomination formally. Use the option the service provides rather than an informal note, so the nominee is recognised when it matters.
4. Prioritise the accounts that hold the most. Start with the services holding your most sensitive or important data — financial, health, identity documents, primary email.
5. Tell your nominee. Make sure the person knows they’ve been named and understands what you’d want done — accessed, preserved, or deleted.
6. Keep your own list. Maintain a private record of where you’ve nominated, so your nominee knows where to act. (Keep that list itself secure.)

What a nominee can and can’t do

A nominee steps into your data rights — not into a blanket power over your whole estate.

Keep the scope clear so expectations are right. A nominee under the DPDP Act is there to exercise your rights as a Data Principal — things like accessing or seeking deletion of your personal data with a company. It’s specifically about your personal data held by that Data Fiduciary. It is not the same as a will, a bank nomination, or legal control of your money and property, which run through their own separate processes. Think of the DPDP nominee as handling the data layer of your digital life, alongside — not instead of — those other arrangements.

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