CIC: PM Modi to decide on releasing Lal Bahadur Shastri's files

New Delhi: The Central Information Commission (CIC) has recommended that the Prime Minister and home minister take a call on declassification of all classified records pertaining to former PM Lal Bahadur Shastri’s death in Tashkent in erstwhile USSR in 1966.

In a pro-disclosure order, information commissioner M Sridhar Acharyulu recommended that classified records be put before the PM and home minister and that the two consider the people’s fundamental right to know.

In an order issued on Monday, Acharyulu said, “The commission directs the CPIOs (central public information officers) of PMO (Prime Minister’s Office), ministry of external affairs and ministry of home affairs to place all those so-called ‘classified papers’ before the Honourable Prime Minister and the home minister, who are recommended to consider the fundamental right to know and demand of the people… to declassify either through an expert committee or by any other process to get the mystery probed and resolved. Even if they can prove that Shastri died by heart attack, that can answer the doubts of the people.”