Workplace Surveillance in the Post-Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, 2023 Era: Reconciling Legitimate Employer Interests with Employee Right to Privacy

Abstract: The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (DPDP Act), along with the Digital Personal Data Protection Rules, 2025 came into an effect on November 13, 2025. As per the Constitution of India, Article 21 state that, every individual has an inviolable Right to Privacy, which is also applies to a corporate workplace as well. Balancing employer's reasonable concerns with the privacy of the employee necessitates protecting the personal data and workspace of the employee and at the same time accomplishing the organizational objectives using fair and proportionate workplace practices. For understand this term more clearly we can take the case of Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) v. Union of India (2017) as an analytical reference point, this article examines the concept of informational privacy within corporate workplaces. In the modern digital economy, AI has plays a very important role in efficient business management but unchecked adoption of AI is likely to undermine data protection principles and employee privacy. This article examines the technical and managerial requirements that may be needed to reconcile these conflicting interests. By means of a comparative study of the Indian DPDP Act in relation to the GDPR of the European Union and judicial precedent such as Bärbulescu v. Romania (2017), this article seeks to examine the rights of Indian and European workers. Keywords: Workplace Surveillance, Employee Privacy, Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023, Monitoring of Employees, Data Protection, Artificial Intelligence