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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | SC bins intelligence audit plea

SC bins intelligence audit plea

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published Published on Feb 24, 2016   modified Modified on Feb 24, 2016
-The Telegraph

New Delhi:
The SupremeCourt today cited a possible dent in national security to dismiss a public interest plea that had sought a directive to ensure that the accounts of the country's premier intelligence agencies were audited to make them accountable to Parliament.

"We feel a judicial order toaudit the agencies will create a dent in our functioning and security. This would lead to a dangerous situation," a bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra told advocate Prashant Bhushan who appeared for the NGO Centre for Public Interest Litigation.

"Sorry, we will not interfere. We must give them room to work and there is no need for judicial interference," the bench added.

TheNGO had filed the PIL alleging that agencies like the Intelligence Bureau, RAW and the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) enjoyed unbridled financial and snooping powers.

Bhushan said officials working with various agencies were, in the name of gathering intelligence, spending crores of rupees from the public exchequer. "There is no account of how much and where they spend," he said.

Attorneygeneral Mukul Rohatgi had opposed the PIL on the ground that an audit would expose intelligence officials, who were already vulnerable becauseof the nature of their job. "How can we have auditing when the country is facing so much of hostility from all sides," Rohatgi argued.

"Weare not inclined to entertain this petition. Executive powers co-exist with legislative powers also," the bench said, rejecting the PIL. "We donot think the court should entertain such... petitions which deal with the security of the country."

Earlier, the Centre had in an affidavit told the court it was not necessary to put in the public domain any detailed information on sensitive organisations like RAW, theIB and the NTRO as they all worked for national security.

The Comptroller and Auditor General, the Centre claimed in the affidavit last year, regularly audits the accounts of these organisations. "Putting information on public domain will only dilute and put to risk the sensitive organisations working for national safety and security."

Inother words, the Centre's stand is that the IB, RAW and the NTRO, although not created under statutory provisions like other government agencies and departments, discharge sensitive functions and hence their activities cannot be subject to public scrutiny like other government organisations.

The NGO, which filed its PIL in 2013, had complained that the three intelligence agencies were functioning withoutany statutory authority. Their role, the PIL alleged, included tapping people's phones and monitoring their activities, thereby infringing upona citizen's fundamental right to liberty that Article 21 of the Constitution guaranteed.

The Telegraph, 24 February, 2016, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1160224/jsp/nation/story_71038.jsp#.Vs0Yr-Y1t_k


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