Unnecessary secrecy led to the leak at the oil ministry, say former bureaucrats

A “callous approach” and a tendency to “unnecessarily” label documents as “secret or classified” is at the root of espionage scandals of the kind that surfaced last week, former bureaucrats have said and sought greater disclosure instead. “There have been government instructions on dealing with sensitive and classified information. There are standard operating procedures, too. In this incident, it seems someone at some level has been callous,” former cabinet secretary T S R Subramanian said, referring to the latest episode that erupted in the petroleum ministry and led to the arrests of some senior executives of private firms and a few low-rung staffers in the department. [caption id=“attachment_2115959” align=“alignleft” width=“380” class=" “]  Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. PIB[/caption] E A S Sarma, who had been a secretary in the power and finance ministries, appeared to put his finger on the crux of such rows - the proclivity among officials tounnecessarily classifying documents as “secret” or “classified”. “There is a habit of unnecessarily classifying every document as secret or classified. Whereas, in the process, the actual secret documents lose importance. There has to be a proper segregation of documents. Also, sensitive ministries like defence and petroleum must have a strict security system to deal with visitors and secret files.” The former IAS officer said government departments should on their own make public governance details, as mandated under the Right to Information (RTI) Act. “Central ministries should put up all details in the public domain. For petroleum ministry, production-sharing contracts (from oil and gas resources) and minutes of management committee meetings and other things must be put in public (domain) so that there is transparency,” Sarma said, suggesting this may also obviate the need for corporate espionage. G Sundaram, who retired as tourism secretary, focused on security. “There has been laxity of the people (staff). There are security norms in the sensitive ministries and they should be tightened.” Asked whether restricting the entry of private companies’ representatives and others like consultants could help, Sundaram said it was not practical. “It is not possible to ban the entry of private companies’ officials in government offices. But there used to be instructions earlier that they can’t meet officials below the deputy-secretary level. Also, such meetings may be held either at a place where no sensitive documents are kept or in the visitors’ rooms,” Sundaram said, adding key files could be kept locked. Former Central Vigilance Commissioner N Vittal flagged greed as the main reason. “It is about an individual’s integrity. That is more important. Unfortunately, the system has been compromised so much that such incidents are happening. Employees should be made aware of the importance of individual integrity and negative effects of greed.” Former additional solicitor-general Biswajit Bhattacharya echoed the view. “This happens due to greed and corruption in public life. It appears there is an unholy nexus between government employees and private companies. The only way to check it is restructuring and revamping sensitive posts. Civil servants who have 100 per cent of integrity should be posted to such posts.” Twelve persons have been arrested so far in the latest espionage case unearthed last week. PTI