Exclusive: Modi government has taken out nuclear arsenal out of the purview of RTI

India Today‎: New Delhi: Wednesday, August 03, 2016.

Modi government has taken out the Strategic Forces Command (SFC), which handles the nuclear arsenal of the country, out of the purview of the Right to Information Act (RTI).

The UPA government, which brought the Act in 2005, had kept the CBI and several other organisations out of the RTI ambit but surprisingly kept the top secret SFC under it.

This would have meant that anybody could have got the details of the nuclear arsenal by spending just Rs 10. But as soon as the matter was brought to the notice of PM Narendra Modi and NSA Ajit Doval, they brought the SFC into the safe zone.

The government said, "In the second schedule to the Right to Information Act, 2005, after serial number 25 and the entry relating thereto, the following serial number and entry shall be inserted, '26 Strategic Forces Command'. The DoPT acts as a nodal authority for implementation of the RTI law.

The second schedule of the RTI Act contains entries of organisations and their functions, which are exempt from the purview of the transparency law.Thus now Strategic Forces Command has also been included in the list of 26 such organisations and functions of intelligence and security agencies like Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), Intelligence Bureau (IB), Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Enforcement Directorate (ED), Special Protection Group (SPG), Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) and National Investigating Agency (NIA) among others.

The responsibility of the Strategic Forces Command is to operationalise the directives of the Nuclear Command Authority (NCA), which is under the Prime Minister's control. The NCA's Executive Council, chaired by the National Security Adviser (NSA), gives inputs to the Political Council, which authorises a nuclear attack if need be. The Political Council is chaired by the Prime Minister and advised by the Executive Council.

This mechanism is meant to ensure that the nuclear weapons are under civilian control. A Command and Control (C2) mechanism prevents their accidental or unauthorised use. The NCA's directives are executed by the Strategic Forces Command headed by a Commander-in-Chief of the rank of Air Marshal.