Indian Express: New Delhi: Friday,
August 19, 2016.
THE Central
Information Commission has rejected a plea seeking the disclosure of records
related to a controversial now-disbanded covert unit set up by Union minister
and former Army chief V K Singh, saying it would affect the security of the country.
The plea was
filed by Aparna Datta Bakshi, wife of Colonel Munishwar Nath “Hunny” Bakshi who
headed the Technical Support Division (TSD), seeking a report submitted by Lt
Gen Vinod Bhatia who had probed the unit’s operations. “The commission strongly
believes that if information of this nature is put in the public domain, it
will invite unnecessary speculation and
will have substantive bearing on national security and will have international
implications,” said information commissioner Divya Prakash Sinha. “We have to
bear in mind that the intelligence gathering mechanism is, by its nature, very
sensitive and impinges on the security of the country”.
The
information commissioner had carried out an in-camera hearing to peruse the
file containing Lt Gen Bhatia’s report. Sinha said the report of the board of
officers had brought out various objectives of the TSD, details of its
methodology, tradecraft as well as operational expenditure of the Secret
Service Fund. “The commission observes after the perusal of documents/files
that invoking Section 10 of the RTI Act is not possible in this case because
various issues finding mention in the reports/files shown to the commission are
interlinked and any disclosure would compromise the strategic security of the
country,” said Sinha.