The appointments above ranks of Joint Secretary in country's external intelligence agency RAW made by the Personnel Department should be made public,the Central Information Commission on Monday ruled. hief Information Commissioner Wajahat Habibullah directed the Department of Personnel and Training to provide the names of such officials to RTI applicant Maj Gen (Retd) V K Singh,who held the post of Joint Secretary in the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). Habibullah,however,exempted the appointments which were directly dealt by the snooping agency with Appointments Committee of the Cabinet without consulting or informing the DOPT. "All the appointments in RAW above the ranks of Joint Secretary made by Appointments Committee of the Cabinet through DOPT will be disclosed," Habibullah said. Author of the book 'India's External Intelligence: Secrets of Research and Analysis Wing' who is facing CBI inquiry for alleged violations of the Official Secrets Act,Singh approached the Commission after his application seeking details of all the officials who held the posts of Joint Secretary and above between 2001-08 in the agency did not yield satisfactory response. The Information provided by the DOPT was full of discrepancies and lot of the information was withheld by the department,Singh alleged before the Commission. He submitted before the Commission that the department was claiming that RAW is an exempted organisation under the Right to Information Act but names of present officers of the agency are on the government portal "sarkaritel" and there was nothing confidential about them. He also said that DOPT had provided some names of RAW officials but withheld some. Singh wondered how can some names be confidential while the rest are public. The department said not all the appointments in RAW are dealt by it and some of them are directly done by RAW through ACC. Hence,information about them will not be available with the department. The point was accepted by Habibullah,who said information about appointments which have been made through DOPT should be given while rest can be withheld as RAW was an exempted organisation under the transparency law. The Chief Information Commissioner said the department should approach the National Informatics Centre and get all the past appointment records updated and such discrepancies should be avoided in future. "The information about officials who have worked in a department is an important part of information which should be with the department and in public domain under section 4 of the RTI Act.It will make your work easy," he said.
