Govt accuses Congress of 'disinformation' campaign on file issue

NEW DELHI: Accusing Congress of initiating a "disinformation" campaign on file destruction issue, the government today asserted that the files related to Mahatma Gandhi's assasination were "safe and secure".

Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu said that the people of the country are "intelligent enough to see (and) understand their (Congress) game plan.

"Even today...., the disinformation campaign (is on) about the destroying (of) the files....that was initiated during the Congress regime in 2012-13.

"Certain guidelines have been given, the process has started. There is nothing wrong in it. This has nothing to do with Mahatma Gandhi's assassination files. They are all safe and secure," he told reporters here.

"This assurance has been given by the Home Minister in a written statement to Parliament. But still some people are writing articles. This is part of a disinformation campaign against this government and BJP. I am confident people of India are intelligent enough to understand their game plan," Naidu said.

Attacking the government, Congress has demanded a white paper from it on its order to weed out old files and papers after it latched on to reports that files related to the assassination of the Mahatma were destroyed on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's direction.

Congress spokesperson Shakeel Ahmed has said that an "impartial investigation" needs to be carried out to determine what kinds of files were destroyed and at what level this decision was taken.

Home Minister Rajnath Singh has already stated that out of the 11,000 files destroyed to weed out files and papers, none belonged to the Mahatma's assassination.