Section 39 — Bar of Jurisdiction

Section 39 does two things in one sentence. First, no civil court has jurisdiction to entertain any suit or proceeding in respect of any matter the Board is empowered to handle under the Act. Second, no court or other authority can grant an injunction against any action taken, or proposed to be taken, in pursuance of a power under the Act. Together, these route DPDPA disputes into the Board's own process — and, on appeal, the Appellate Tribunal — rather than into the ordinary civil court system.

A bar with a defined edge, not an unlimited one

The bar is scoped to matters "for which the Board is empowered under the provisions of this Act" — it doesn't oust civil court jurisdiction wholesale. A dispute that genuinely falls outside anything the Board can decide isn't caught by this section at all. That's the same idea Section 38(1) protects from a different angle: a Data Principal's separate legal claim under some other law — a tort claim, a consumer-protection complaint — isn't a matter the Board is empowered on, so Section 39 doesn't block it. What it does block is trying to get a civil court to decide something that is squarely within the Board's remit, or to injunct the Board mid-process.

Why this matters in practice

For an organisation facing a Board inquiry, this closes off a strategy that might otherwise look appealing — seeking an injunction from a civil court to pause or block Board proceedings while a dispute is sorted out elsewhere. Section 39 removes that option for anything within the Board's statutory powers. The available response to a Board decision an organisation disagrees with is the Act's own appeal route, not a parallel civil suit.

Illustration: a Data Fiduciary facing a Board inquiry over an alleged Section 8(6) breach-notification failure tries to get a civil court to stay the proceeding pending a separate commercial dispute with the complainant. Section 39 bars the court from granting that injunction, because the inquiry itself is a matter the Board is empowered to handle under the Act — the Fiduciary's recourse, if it disagrees with the Board's eventual decision, is an appeal, not a civil-court injunction against the process itself.

How Section 39 connects to the rest of the Act

Section 34 is part of why this bar matters so much to a Data Principal specifically — since the Board's own remedy is a penalty to the Consolidated Fund rather than compensation, and Section 39 blocks the civil-court route for the same matter, a complainant's practical options run entirely through the Board's process for anything within its remit. Section 38(1) is the provision that keeps a genuinely separate legal claim — one outside the Board's powers — from being swept up in this bar at all.