Stung by the law ministry’s disclosure of the then Chief Election Commissioner N Gopalaswami’s “confidential” complaint against his colleague Navin Chawla, the President’s Secretary has asked the Personnel department to frame procedural guidelines and make requisite changes in the law to avoid such “embarrassing” situations.
The department of personnel and training (DOPT) after receiving a three-page communication from the President’s Secretary, Christy Fernandez, in March, made public in an RTI reply, issued directions to all government departments to disclose records of another department only after taking their consent.
The case relates to the complaint of Gopalaswami against the then sitting Election Commissioner, Navin Chawla, filed before the President, a copy of which was denied to RTI applicant S C Agrawal by the President’s secretariat, that considered the information to be “confidential”.
Meanwhile, the law ministry, which got a copy of the query, had disclosed the entire 93-page letter to Rajasthan-based S S Ranawat and BJP leader Arun Jaitley.
Fernandez had said in his letter that confidential papers are, at times, sent to different departments for examination although the said authority may not be the original custodian of the document.
“For any such authority to disclose confidential documents which are being denied by the original custodian can lead to a peculiar situation, putting the Government in an embarrassing position as has been witnessed in the case,” the letter provided to Agrawal in an RTI reply said.