Narayanan, Vajpayee

New Delhi. Aug. 8: Chief information commissioner Wajahat Habibullah has asked the Centre to furnish letters written by the former President, the late K.R. Narayanan, to Atal Bihari Vajpayee at the height of the 2002 Gujarat riots.

The commissioner today sent the ministry of personnel a notice asking for the letters. This follows a Vellore resident’s appeal under the Right to Information Act.

“This commission, after careful consideration, has decided to call for the correspondence and will examine whether its disclosure will serve or harm public interest,” the notice said.

The letters, written between February 28 (the day the riots broke out) and March 15, 2002, are believed to have censured the Vajpayee government for its inability to control the anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat.

On February 27, 57 kar sevaks were burnt to death after their coaches (S6 and S7) on the Sabarmati Express caught fire near Godhra station, igniting a wave of attacks against Muslims.

The letters must be brought to the commission on August 22, when copies will be made before they are returned to the ministry of personnel — which keeps all such correspondence.

Based on their content, Habibullah said, the commission would send further directives to the government.

Since the letters are “sensitive”, a senior ministry official will have to be present when copies are made and the letters “sealed before the eyes of the commission”.

This is not the first time that a public authority has called for the letters.

The Nanavati-Shah inquiry committee, set up by the Gujarat government in the aftermath of the post-Godhra carnage, sought them last year, but the President’s office refused to hand them out on grounds of “privilege”.

Civil rights groups have long clamoured for the letters to be made public. This time round, it was an individual called Ramesh who took his request to the information panel.

When the commission first told the ministry about his appeal, additional solicitor-general Gopal Subramanium insisted that the letters could not be made available because they pertained to matters of “national security”.

After hearing the ministry and Ramesh on June 27, the Commission said the document could not be held back. This was followed by today’s notice to the ministry.