The
Tribune: New Delhi: Tuesday, September 25, 2018.
The
Central Information Commission (CIC) on Monday asked the Central Public
Information Officers of the PMO, Ministries of External Affairs and Home to
place all “so-called classified” papers before the PM and Home Minister to
declassify documents relating to the death of former PM Lal Bahadur Shastri.
Disposing
of a RTI application, the CIC said except a medical report nothing has been
disclosed and the mystery was being allowed to persist and raised questions
that need to be answered by the ministries concerned, in response to the RTI,
family members of Lal Bahadur Shastri and people. Shastri died in Tashkent,
then Soviet Russia on January 11, 1966.
Since
the records were not classified under Official Secrets Act but by individual
ministry, the CIC sought to know, which ministry did so; whether papers related
to Shastri’s death were classified as top secret/secret/confidential;
justification to invoke part of the RTI Act to deny; period for classification;
status of any move by any ministry to consider declassification, and finally,
using the doctrine of severability, portion of document classified could be
blocked or deleted. — TNS
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