Way Forward
- More spy cameras being installed; restriction on visitors post office hrs
- Where more secrecy is needed, sr officers type reports themselves
- Reclassification of official documents to minimise number of secret files
- More documents to be put on website for greater transparency
- Frequent transfer of junior- and middle-level staff to prevent nexus
- Provide common platform to all corporate players for less power play
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In the decade-long UPA tenure, at least two Union ministers—Mani Shankar Aiyar and Jaipal Reddy—had tried to plug the leak of official papers, particularly sensitive documents, from the corridors of the petroleum ministry in New Delhi’s Shastri Bhavan. But they met with limited success. In contrast, the NDA government appears to have managed to bring to the fore in just 10 months some of the hands behind the routine leak of documents.
So it is not surprising to hear admiring comments from some senior Congress leaders that young, ‘spunky’ petroleum minister “Dharmendra Pradhan has proved he is not vulnerable to corporate pressures. He is pressing the arbitration issue against Reliance Industries (RIL) and has not succumbed to pressure on the gas pricing front”.
On his part, Pradhan denies the market buzz that a complaint by a global energy giant about the leak of a confidential correspondence with the ministry was one of the triggers for the stepping up of the vigil—including installation of more CCTV cameras in the ministry. “That is misinformation,” Pradhan told Outlook. “Right at the onset we had an inkling that things were not going right and had handed over the investigation to competent authorities in June last year.”
“This government is committed to uproot the basic problem as it is detrimental to free and fair governance, whosoever may be behind it or howsoever powerful,” he adds. On whether the leaked documents had had any impact on government decisions or policymaking, the minister said it will be known “only after all the papers leaked have been studied. The probe is on to track the persons involved, the documents taken and where they ended—the whole process—to understand the implications.”
The nabbing of a score of junior government staff along with two journalists and officials from major corporate houses, including Reliance Industries, Reliance Power, the Essar Group, Cairn India and Jubilant Energy is without doubt just the tip of the iceberg as more moles have tumbled out of other ministries, including power and defence. These are key sectors where sensitive information like plans for oil imports, oil and gas pricing, energy policy, defence procurement and so on, leaked in advance, are known to influence market movement or help corporate re-strategise to forge ahead of rivals.
Former chairman and managing director of ONGC R.S. Sharma admitted that during his tenure, there were several occasions where the PSU was put at a disadvantage and even embarrassment due to the leak of sensitive information. “Many a time, the board agenda would be leaked before the meeting, influencing the market. Our plans for procurements would be leaked. For a commercial enterprise, such leakages are expensive,” says Sharma, adding that he had taken up the issue with the petroleum secretary and even approached the IB for investigation. Phones of some of the suspects were even tapped, but nothing came of it.
Senior journalists claim that corporates were known to procure government documents even in the early ’80s. In October 1998, a key lobbyist of the undivided Reliance empire. V. Balasubramaniam (Balu), was arrested under the Official Secrets Act for being in possession of sensitive documents. Petroleum sector veterans claim this was the start of official documents being procured by corporates and being parcelled to what became highly in demand portals like Santanu Saikia’s IndianPetro.com, Infraline and new entrant Metis, among others.
These energy portals became indispensable for industry, both in India and overseas, as they were able to give highly prized information on not just government policies and decisions in the making but also on the plans of rivals. Ironically, ONGC too is a subscriber to the very portals that have caused it several embarrassing moments and led to several expensive decisions.
Cabinet secretary Ajit Seth on Tuesday held a high-level meeting to frame new security guidelines even as sections of the government are experimenting with an attempt at a more transparent decision-making process.
Former petroleum secretary S.C. Tripathi, who during his tenure had to grapple with considerable corporate pressures, says only the small fry is being caught as “no big boss will admit to have given instructions to carry out such things directly. The way forward is to set up a high-level committee to study the influence corporates bring to bear on politics, media and bureaucracy on the lines of the Vohra committee to study influence of criminals on politics.”
Many of the former senior bureaucrats spoken to favoured reclassification of the documents so that in this era of RTI, there is greater transparency and less temptation for corporate espionage. They also mooted frequent transfer of junior- and mid-level staff to prevent the formation of any nexus. Given the overlap of various issues, some of the information has been known to leak from more than one ministry, including the finance ministry, which is one of the most vigilantly watched.
Two recent achievements of the coal ministry under MoS for power and coal Piyush Goyal’s charge was the recent successful auction of 18 blocks which generated a revenue of Rs 1,59,000 crore and the 10 per cent stake sale in Coal India to net Rs 22,558 crore. While the government was able to maintain complete secrecy in the disinvestment process till a day before the stake sale to prevent profiteering, in the auction process, coal secretary Anil Swarup says, “We have benefited from non-secrecy.” Swarup firmly believes that there is greater room for transparency to allow for discussion and information flow.
But given the tendency of corporates to snoop for information, Goyal has taken no chances—by his own admission, one of the first tasks he undertook on taking charge was to issue orders for spy cameras to be installed and institute a blanket ban against corporate lobbying and “ji hazoori” by PSU staff.
So will this episode see the last of journalists using official documents to source exclusive reports? Highly unlikely, says R. Sasankan, editor of Indian Oil and Gas (which has moved from a print avatar to an online version). “We cannot depend only on press releases and press conferences and so have to depend on documents to find out the decision-making process,” he says, clarifying that only if an official document is used for trading does it become violation of law.
The fact remains that while journalists will always remain on the lookout for scoops, including official documents to buttress their reports, bureaucrats past and present say that corporates in India have always been known to use all means to influence policymaking. Nothing has really changed, alas.
