The Wire: New Delhi: Saturday,
May 28, 2016.
The Central
Information Commission has also asked the Ministry of Defence to reveal the
Attorney General’s opinion on sending back already procured choppers.
The Central
Information Commission (CIC) has directed the Ministry of Defence to place in
the public domain some of the information pertaining to India’s scrapping of
the Rs. 3,700 crore AgustaWestland chopper deal. The CIC has demanded that all
file notings, documents, correspondence and agreements related to the signing
of the contract be shown to it on camera, so that it can decide if the
disclosure can be exempted under the Right to Information Act (RTI).
The ministry
has been directed by Information Commissioner Divya Prakash Singh to disclose
the bank guarantee amount received by India and whether the helicopters already
procured from the company would be sent back.
Responding to
a petition filed by RTI activist Subhash Chandra Agarwal, the CIC has also
asked the ministry to provide a copy of the attorney general’s opinion on
sending back already procured helicopters.
However, the
commission upheld the ministry’s view on not sharing some information, such as
file notings and correspondence on action taken to recover payments already
made by India towards the choppers that had been procured, saying that any
disclosure of this information would affect ongoing arbitration proceedings to
recover these payments.
The CIC also
agreed with the ministry’s decision not to make public the names of Indians and
foreigners (as well as their current and past professional posts) who are
currently under the scanner for receiving kickbacks in the chopper deal,
because information of this nature is exempted under Section 8(1)(h) of the RTI
Act.
Similarly,
the CIC allowed the ministry to not disclose information pertaining to the full
names of the suspects, who are referred to by acronyms, such as “POL”, “AP” and “FAM”, as well as the amount of
kickbacks received by each as reported in the Italian court.
But the
commission said that the ministry would have to provide the details of the
cases in Italian courts in which India is a party. It also directed the
ministry to provide the names of the Italian advocates and law firms hired to
represent India in the Italian courts.
The ministry
had said that it did not have information on the names of persons whom the CBI
had sought permission to interrogate or prosecute and the names of persons who
have already begun to be interrogated in India. The CIC accepted this.
The ministry
had also claimed before the panel that it did not know whether the union
government had not allowed the CBI to interrogate certain persons and if the
CBI had sought permission to question former National Security Advisor M.K.
Narayanan and former Director of Special Protection Group B.V. Wanchoo on the
matter.
Agarwal had
demanded information on two senior government functionaries citing a news
report that appeared in the January 2, 2014 edition of the Hindustan Times. The
report claimed that the then UPA government had red-flagged the CBI probe
against the two as they were then serving as the governors of West Bengal and
Goa respectively.
The CIC has
directed the chief public information officer at the ministry to provide the
information sought within 15 days of receiving the order.
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