The selective publication of letters exchanged between the former President, Mr. Sanjiva Reddy, and the former Prime Minister, Mr. Morarji Desai, raises important issues. The publication perhaps constitutes a violation of the Official Secrets Act. But this is the least of the issues it raises. For all we know, the present government will ignore this breach as it has ignored other breaches, even those inconvenient to itself, as in respect of developments in Assam on the eve of and during the election to the Vidhan Sabha last January. In any case, this problem concerns only the authorities, the journalist concerned, Mr. Arun Gandhi, and his printers and publishers. But another related question is of wider public interest. Who has made these letters available to Mr. Gandhi? From the tenor of the excerpts from Mr. Gandhi’s forthcoming book which have been published in the Bombay magazine “Imprint”, it would appear that either Mr. Desai himself or someone with access to his papers has made the letters available with a view to putting Mr. Reddy in the wrong. If this is in fact the case, Mr. Desai has been guilty, directly or indirectly, of a grave impropriety.
This issue cannot be glossed over because at stake is the relationship between the President and the Prime Minister of India. This relationship, it is hardly necessary to emphasize, depends on the absolute confidentiality of the exchanges between them. Thus, if either of the two individuals is apprehensive that the other might make the exchanges public within weeks or months of quitting office, they obviously cannot trust each other as they should if they are to do justice to the offices they hold. This is not the end of the matter. For if it is in fact true that Mr. Desai or some member of his entourage has disclosed the correspondence, then it raises the question as to how Mr. Desai came into possession of the letters. The inference must be that either Mr. Desai himself or some member of his entourage took the letters with him when the former quit the office of Prime Minister in July 1979. In view of what has been happening not only in the United States, where those in high offices treat official papers as their private property, but also in the United Kingdom, it is difficult to say whether this action violates the law of the land. But this issue deserves to be examined even if the government decides to let the controversy raised by the publication of the correspondence take its own course. In any case, since the letters have become public property in a selective manner, it is only proper that their texts should now be made available so that the issue of the proper role of the President under the Constitution can be discussed in a more concrete way than it has been possible so far. Up to now the debate has proceeded on the basis of principles and not of facts because authentic facts have not been available for careful scrutiny. MPs belonging to all parties have demanded that the correspondence be placed on the table of both the houses of parliament.This is a legitimate demand which should be conceded.