Corporate espionage due to callous bureaucratic approach: Ex-babus

New Delhi, Feb 22: The corporate espionage scandal is a result of callous administrative approach and non-compliance of standard operating procedures in government offices dealing with sensitive and secret matters, according to former bureaucrats.

Some of them criticised the way secret matters were being dealt. "There have been government's instructions on dealing with sensitive and classified information. There are standard operating procedures too. In this incident, it seems someone at some level has been callous," Former Cabinet Secretary T S R Subramanian said.

Former IAS officer E A S Sarma criticised the procedure of unnecessary classifying documents as "secret" or "classified".

"There is a habit of unnecessarily classifying every document as secret or classified. Whereas, in the process the actual secret documents lost importance. There has to be a proper segregation of documents. "Sensitive ministries like Defence and Petroleum must have a strict security system to deal with visitors and secret files," he told PTI.

Sarma, who has been a former secretary of Power and Finance ministries, said that government departments should suo motu disclose governance details in public domain, as mandated under the Right to Information (RTI) Act.

"Central government ministries should put up all the details in public domain. For Petroleum Ministry, production sharing contracts and minutes of the management committee meetings and other things must be put in public. So that there is transparency," he said suggesting that this may also put an end to incidents of corporate espionage.

PTI