Business
Standard: New Delhi: Thursday, 16 April 2015.
Government
today constituted a three-member committee of top bureaucrats to go into
implications of the Official Secrets Act and the RTI law as demands mounted for
declassification of files related to Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose.
The first
meeting of the panel, which consists of Secretaries of Home, Law and Personnel,
will take place tomorrow, official sources said today.
Sources said
the constitution of the panel and the meeting tomorrow have nothing to do with
the controversy surrounding Bose.
However, the government's
move came amidst growing demands for declassification of nearly 90 files which
are yet to be made public. Interestingly, a grandnephew of Bose, Surya Kumar
Bose, had met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Berlin yesterday and requested
him declassify all files related to events since his death or disappearance in
Taiwan on August 18, 1945.
The issue of
Netaji related files came to the fore last week when a controversy broke out
following reports that his family was kept under surveillance by the
Intelligence Bureau for 20 years, much of it during the tenure of Prime
Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.
Sources said
among nearly 90 classified files relating to Bose, around 27 are with the
Ministry of External Affairs while rest with the Prime Minister's Office.
There is no
file related to the freedom fighter with the Home Ministry as all have already
been declassified and handed over to the National Archives.
The committee
will examine certain provisions of the Official Secret Act and the Right to
Information Act and whether and how much old official files could be
declassified, sources said.
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