Govt of India's declassification report-II
PMO has 28,685 secret files; but none declassified this year

28 August, 2009: The Prime Minister's Office is holding 28,685 classified files and not one of them have been declassified this year. This startling piece of information has been revealed by the nation's top office under the Right to Information. Incredibly, the manual that governs the declassification process in the office is it self classified.

"Declassification of files is done as per the Manual of Departmental Security Instructions issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs…Ministry of Home Affairs has marked this Manual as confidential and has declined to provide it under section 8(1)(a) Act, 2005," reads the response by a PMO Under Secretary, duly approved by a Deputy Secretary, to Chandarchur Ghose of Endthesecrecy.com.

Section 8 (I) (a) of RTI Act debars release of info whose disclosure can "prejudicially affect the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security, strategic, scientific or economic interests of the State, relation with foreign State or lead to incitement of an offence."

Government officials invariably invoke this clause to bar the release of information stamped Confidential, Secret and Top Secret.

The PMO response says that declassification "is a continuous process" for them, but its responses to our queries do not inspire much confidence. The office has listed, as asked, the year-wise number of files declassified recently. Year 2005 saw release of only one file; whereas 37 files were declassified in 2007. The files belong to the years in between 1947 and 1980.

However, there is a big catch. None of the "declassified files" have been sent to the National Archives down the Raisena Hill in New Delhi. This is to say that the released files remain inaccessible to all of us.

The PMO's response is second in a series where Endthesecrecy.com is seeking basic facts about declassification in India. Earlier, the Ministry of Defence had stated that they had not declassified any record in last few years.

The application to the PMO also sought to know the status of declassification undertaken by India's foreign intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing, which reports to the Prime Minister. The PMO has forwarded the matter to the agency for an appropriate answer.