Context: Officials Secrets Act has its roots in the British colonial era. This was brought in with the main objective of muzzling the voice of a large number of newspapers that had come up in several languages, and were opposing the Raj’s policies

The Delhi police has arrested a strategic affairs analyst and two others – a 30- year-old Chinese woman and her “Nepalese accomplice” – under the Official Secrets Act (OSA).

The police claimed that the analyst, had passed on information such as the deployment of Indian troops on the border to Chinese intelligence officers.

What is the Official Secrets Act?

• OSA has its roots in the British colonial era.
• The original version was The Indian Official Secrets Act (Act XIV), 1889.
• This was brought in with the main objective of muzzling the voice of a large number of newspapers that had come up in several languages, and were opposing the Raj’s policies, building political consciousness and facing police crackdowns and prison terms.
• 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.
• In 1923, a newer version was notified. The Indian Official Secrets Act (Act No XIX of 1923) was extended to all matters of secrecy and confidentiality in governance in the country.
• 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.
• 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. It has often been argued that the law is in direct conflict with the Right to Information Act, 2005.

Between the RTI Act and OSA, which has primacy?

• Section 22 of the RTI Act provides for its primacy vis-a-vis provisions of other laws, including OSA.
• This gives the RTI Act an overriding effect, notwithstanding anything inconsistent with the provisions of OSA.
• So if there is any inconsistency in OSA with regard to furnishing of information, it will be superseded by the RTI Act.
• However, under Sections 8 and 9 of the RTI Act, the government can refuse information. Effectively, if the government classifies a document as “secret” under OSA Clause 6, that document can be kept outside the ambit of the RTI Act, and the government can invoke Sections 8 or 9. Legal experts see this as a loophole.

Has there been any effort to change provisions of OSA?

• In 1971, the Law Commission became the first official body to make an observation regarding OSA.
• In its report on ‘Offences Against National Security’, it observed that “it agrees with the contention” that “merely because a circular is marked secret or confidential, it should not attract the provisions of the Act if the publication thereof is in the interest of the public and no question of national emergency and interest of the State as such arises”.
• The Law Commission, however, did not recommend any changes to the Act.
• In 2006, the Second Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC) recommended that OSA be repealed, and replaced with a chapter in the National Security Act containing provisions relating to official secrets.
• Observing that OSA was “incongruous with the regime of transparency in a democratic society”, the ARC referred to the 1971 Law Commission report that had called for an “umbrella Act” to be passed to bring together all laws relating to national security.
• In 2015, the government had set up a committee to look into provisions of the OSA in light of the RTI Act, which recommended that OSA be made more transparent and in line with the RTI Act.

What are the major instances when OSA has been invoked?

• One of the oldest and longest criminal trials involving OSA is the 1985 Coomar Narain spy case.
• Twelve former staff members in the Prime Minister’s Office and Rashtrapati Bhavan Secretariat were sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment in 2002.
• The other high-profile case was the ISRO spy case targeting scientist S Nambi Narayan. Before his acquittal, he had faced a criminal trial under OSA and was accused of passing on rocket and cryogenic technology to Pakistan for illegal gratification.
• The most recent conviction under OSA came in 2018, when a Delhi court sentenced former diplomat Madhuri Gupta, who had served at the Indian High Commission in Islamabad, to three years in jail for passing on sensitive information to the ISI.

https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/what-is-official-secrets-act-6603218/

E-Gram Swaraj Portal

Context: With a vision to strengthen digitalization in Panchayats for the purpose of empowering rural India, a unified tool e-Gram SWARAJ portal (https://egramswaraj.gov.in/) has been developed by the Ministry for effective monitoring and evaluation of works taken up in the Gram Panchayats.

About:

• e-Gram SWARAJ unifies the planning, accounting and monitoring functions of Gram Panchayats. It’s combination with the Area Profiler application, Local Government Directory (LGD) and the Public Financial Management System (PFMS) renders easier reporting and tracking of Gram Panchayat’s activities.
• It provides a single window for capturing Panchayat information with the complete Profile of the Panchayat, details of Panchayat finances, asset details, activities taken up through Gram Panchayat Development Plan (GPDP), Panchayat information from other Ministries/ Departments such as Census 2011, SECC data, Mission Antyodaya survey report etc.
• For the year 2020-21, around 2.43 lakh Gram Panchayats have finalized their GPDP on e-Gram SWARAJ. Further, around 1.24 lakh Gram Panchayats have transacted online using the e-Gram SWARAJ Online Payment Module.

https://pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1656950

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