Defence Minister Rajnath Singh approves policy on declassification of war operations

According to the policy, each organisation under the Ministry of Defence will transfer the records, to the History Division for proper upkeep, archival and writing the histories, the ministry said.

Finer details of war operations, that might have only been passed on through word of mouth till now, will soon be made public and archived as Defence Minister Rajnath Singh has given approval to a policy on declassification of military history. Raksha Mantri Shri @rajnathsingh has approved the policy on archiving, declassification and compilation/publication of war/operations histories by the Ministry of Defence. According to the policy, each organisation under the Ministry of Defence will transfer records, including war diaries, letters of proceedings and operational record books, etc., to the History Division for proper upkeep, archival and writing the histories, the ministry said. The requirement of having war histories written with a clear cut policy on declassification of war records was recommended by the Kargil Review Committee, headed by K Subrahmanyam, as well as N N Vohra Committee in order to analyse lessons learnt and prevent future mistakes. Post the Kargil war of 1999, recommendations on national security also mentioned the desirability of authoritative war history.