Kolkata, April 2 (PTI): The full bench of the Central Information Commission will decide whether documents consulted by enquiry panels probing the mysterious disappearance of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose should be disclosed, Information Commissioner A N Tiwari has said.
Tiwari conveyed this recently to Mission Netaji, a Delhi-based organisation campaigning to access information on the disappearance of the icon of the freedom movement, while hearing its appeal in this regard.
Giving a "final chance" to the Union home ministry to come clear on the issue, Tiwari asked it to provide an adequate explanation from the ministerial level on why documents sought by Mission Netaji could not be made public.
All documents on the basis of which the two inquiry panels led by Shah Nawaz Khan (1956) and G D Khosla (1970-74) made their decisions have been kept secret by the government.
Tiwari's directive came close on the heels of Information Commissioner O P Kejriwal directing the external affairs ministry to provide Mission Netaji's Anuj Dhar copies of its correspondence with the Sovet Union and later Russia on Netaji's disappearance.
"If adequate explanations are not provided, the Commission will be compelled to direct the disclosure of all documents in question," Kejriwal said.
Last year, Home Minister Shivraj Patil announced in Parliament that investigations conducted by Khan and Khosla were more credible than that of Justice M K Mukherjee who headed another panel that probed Netaji's disappearance.
Following Patil's announcement, Mission Netaji's Sayantan Dasgupta filed a petition with the home ministry to seek copies of all documents examined by the Khan and Khosla panels.
"Our case has been that these enquiries made selective use of evidence to arrive at the conclusion to suit the government's view that Netaji died in Taipei," Dasgupta claimed.
In response, the home ministry refused to provide documents, taking recourse to secion 8 1(a) of the
RTI Act, which exempts the release of information information which can "prejudicially affect sovereignty and integrity of India", "relations with a foreign state" or "lead to incitement of offence".
Dasgupta then filed a complaint with the
CIC. In its first hearing in October last year, home ministry officials said they were not aware of the documents examined by the earlier panels as they, unlike the Mukherjee Commission, had not appended any list of exhibits.
Tiwari then directed Dasgupta to revise the original application to demand specific documents. Accordingly, Mission Netaji filed a revised petition with a list of 202 documents used as exhibits by the Khosla Commission in its arguments section.
At the latest hearing last week, home ministry officials were to appear with the papers but instead came with a secret note from Home Secretary V K Duggal, who has since retired.
Irked at the letter that reiterated the same arguments using Section 8 1(a), Tiwari said: "The issue is far too important to be decided in an ad hoc manner at the level of the home secretary. I am not prepared to allow an omnibus recourse to Section 8 1(a)."
The
CIC assured the appellant that Indians had every right to have full information on their hero.
The Hindu News Update Service