OFFICIAL SECRETS ACT

March 10, 2019

Recently in the Supreme Court, the government threatened to invoke the Official Secrets Act against two publications that had run reports on the Rafale deal, on the basis of documents which, the government claimed, had been stolen from the Defence Ministry.

About:

Background:
- The Indian Official Secrets Act, 1889 was brought in with the main objective of curbing the voice of a large number of newspapers that were opposing the British policies.
- It was amended and made more stringent in the form of The Indian Official Secrets Act, 1904, during Lord Curzon’s tenure as Viceroy of India.
Present version: In 1923, a newer version was notified. The Indian Official Secrets Act, 1923 was extended to all matters of secrecy and confidentiality in governance in the country.
Objective:
- It broadly deals with two aspects — spying or espionage, covered under Section 3, and disclosure of other secret information of the government, under Section 5.
- Under Section 5, both the person communicating the information, and the person receiving the information, can be punished.
Secret information:
- Secret information can be any official code, password, sketch, plan, model, article, note, document or information.
- For classifying a document, a government Ministry or Department follows the Manual of Departmental Security Instructions, 1994, not under OSA.
- Also, OSA itself does not say what a “secret” document is. It is the government’s discretion to decide what falls under the ambit of a “secret” document to be charged under OSA.