India’s External Intelligence: Secrets of RAW: Outlook Scoop- 2007

Outlook scooped V.K. Singh's expose on RAW. Now, he's booked under the Official Secrets Act. Is this act meant for misuse? Saikat Datta: Draconian Law
What is wrong with the OSA?

Has several vague, "all-inclusive" provisions; anyone can be prosecuted for sharing even harmless information

What is "secret" has not been defined, leaving scope for misuse

Any document can be deemed secret on the opinion of an "expert"

Heavily loaded against the accused. Only Section 5 has a provision for bail which is rarely given.

Is used as a vendetta tool to book whistleblowers and unpliable officials.

Maj Gen V.K. Singh is the latest in the line of people to be targeted under the OSA. The law, which is heavily loaded against the accused, is usually invoked whenever the state wishes to settle scores or rein in whistleblowers. Here are some examples:

Capt B.K. Subbarao was hailed as one of the finest nuclear scientists in the country. He was seconded from the Indian navy to help with the nuclear submarine programme but ended up being branded as a spy
Reason: he detected serious flaws in the designs being drawn up for the prototype at the Bhaba Atomic Research Centre (BARC) in Trombay. This upset the top brass in the nuclear establishment. Subbarao was hounded out of BARC and arrested under OSA at Mumbai airport in 1990 before he boarded a flight to the US. His repeated appeals to the judiciary fell on deaf ears till the prosecuting agency was directed to come up with the "evidence" it had to prove his guilt. It turned out to be Subbarao's doctoral thesis on nuclear science, submitted to IIT Powai! As the case began to crumble, Subbarao had to face 65 judges in the search for justice. Finally, two years after his arrest, Subbarao was acquitted.

Iftikar Gilani, a Delhi-based Kashmiri journalist, was picked up by the IB for allegedly accessing secrets "prejudicial to the safety and security of the nation". After several months in jail, it finally came to light that the case against Gilani was based on a book published by the Institute of Strategic Studies, Islamabad, 13 years ago.
Reason: The opinion of the director general of military intelligence (DGMI) stating that the material recovered from Gilani was not secret was kept away from the courts. Finally, after then defence minister George Fernandes directed the DGMI to personally appear in court with his revised opinion, it was taken into account. The case was dismissed.

Ajay Kumar, a low-level functionary in the Indian Parliament, was not so lucky with the OSA. The evidence against him: possession of parliamentary reports that had already been tabled. The prosecution chose to ignore the fact these were on sale in Parliament. His lawyer V.K. Ohri told Outlook: "They finally planted a hand-written map of a cantonment that even the army officers have said on record does not have any position authenticated. In fact, they don't even know whether the places marked in the crude map exist or not. Finally, in the age of Google Earth what is the relevance of a hand-drawn map?" asks Ohri.

Babulnath Maurya, a designer who served in naval headquarters, was also booked under OSA. Incredible as it may sound, the evidence submitted by the prosecution against Maurya were files which were on his desk. "Can you believe the absurdity of the case," asks Ohri, also Maurya's lawyer. "The papers which were supposed to be on his official desk were collected from his office drawer as proof that he was spying."
The OSA is a handy tool for the government because it is very vague on what is secret. A personal diary can be deemed "secret" if it is stamped by an official. Similarly, information passed on in the course of official work can become secret. And once anyone is arrested under OSA, there is little chance of bail.

With such blatant misuse, it was a welcome and overdue development when the Administrative Reforms Committee (ARC), in its first report a few months ago, targeted the OSA, saying it was "enacted in the colonial era". The ARC's chairman Veerappa Moily is unequivocal in his demand that the Act be repealed. "After the enactment of the RTI Act, the OSA, has no place to survive and even its relics may no longer remain," he says.

Echoing Moily is former member of the National Advisory Council and Magsaysay award winner Aruna Roy. "The OSA should have been scrapped in 1947 when we gained independence," she says.

In fact, the scrapping of the OSA is a demand that has found support from across the political spectrum with former PM Atal Behari Vajpayee, L.K Advani and Jaswant Singh stating that the OSA, at the very least, needs to be reviewed. Congress spokesman Abhishek Manu Singhvi, in an article published in 2001, had pointed out that unlike the British OSA, the Indian Act continues to remain "unrevised despite decades of effort". Calling the OSA "anachronistic", Singhvi argued that to empower society, the government must "reduce the culture of secrecy and limit the power of service providers (bureaucrats) with the reforms of the OSA".

Not only does the OSA threaten individual freedom and liberties, it has also been used as a tool to deny information as Moushumi Basu, an associate professor at the centre for international politics, jnu, found out. During her doctoral research on the World Bank, she was shocked to learn that the loan agreements executed by India with the World Bank to bail itself out of its financial crisis in 1991 are state secrets. Recalls Basu: "When I asked Manmohan Singh, who was then only a Rajya Sabha member, he insisted that all these papers had been tabled in Parliament. But that is not the case and they continue to be a state secret. So not only is defence under OSA but even development programmes are under its ambit," says Basu.

Veteran journalist B.G. Verghese had a similar experience when he discovered that maps of Indian rivers, freely available on the internet and in shops, was actually covered under the OSA. Points out Verghese: "Information is power and that is why the bureaucrats want to deny citizens information. But in India instead of taking corrective measures we usually shoot the messenger." B. Raman, former additional secretary with RAW, says then prime minister V.P. Singh had set up two committees during his government. One was to examine whether the intelligence agencies could be brought under parliamentary oversight and the second to review the OSA. "There was unanimous opinion within the intelligence community that the British model of parliamentary oversight should be accepted."

But in the case of Major General V.K. Singh, the government seems to have let vendetta blind it from the fact that it has no shred of evidence against him. Little wonder then that his book has so far not been banned.
official secrets act: The Iron Fig Leaf