Frame email policy for officials within a month: HC to govt

The Centre was today asked by the Delhi High Court to finalise within a month its email policy for government employees in consonance with the Public Records Act so that official data is not transferred to a server outside India.

The court also asked the government to issue notification regarding electronic signature which is required for sending a complaint through email to Facebook, on a plea alleging that the social network website is adopting the cumbersome procedure for users to send a complaint to its grievance officer.

A bench of justices B D Ahmed and Vibhu Bakhru recorded the submission of Centre's standing counsel Sumit Pushkarna that process for framing the email policy for government employees is on and it has sought opinion from various ministries on it which would take two months time.

"... We hope that the said policy will put in place in four weeks," the bench said.

The court was hearing a PIL filed by former BJP leader N Govindacharya contending that for official purposes, the officers use Gmail accounts whose servers are outside India and transfer of country's official data is violative of the Public Records Act.

The petition also sought a direction to ensure safety of the data of 50 million Indian users which was transferred "to the US and is being used for commercial gains in violation of the right to privacy.