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The Official Secrets Act, 1923 is a comprehensive document relating to official secrets and defines a number of offences. The Act is aimed at maintaining the security of the State against leakage of secret information, sabotage and the like. However, many of the acts prohibited by this law may be committed by newspapers and journalists, as private individuals, while performing their duties.
The Official Secret Act, 1923 broadly has two parts- one relating to spying for the enemies. The punishment for spying in relation to the country’s defence is upto fourteen years. The other relates to unauthorized communication of any other secret official code or pass words or any sketch, plan, model, article, note, document or information (Sec.5).
The provision of Sec.5 is more important from the stand-point of the freedom of the press. The Government whose administrative culture is secrecy, has an internal system of dividing its documents into ‘classified’ and ‘non classified’ categories. The classified documents are considered secret under various statues, such as “Top Secret”, “Secret”, “Confidential” and “Restricted personal –note for publication”. Laws against printing of classified documents are understandable in relation to certain areas like defence and security of the country. But, the Official Secret Act also prohibits publication or communication of any information, which may be directly or indirectly useful to the enemy.
In India it has been widely demanded that Section 5 of the Official Secrets Act which inhibits free reporting should be done away with. It prescribes a punishment with imprisonment upto five years or fine or with both for a person who voluntarily receives or communicates any official secret. The Act does so without defining an official secrete. This means that any official information which has been deemed by the authorities as secret can be published only on the pain of punishment.
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