E-mail policy for govt employees for official communications:

The Centre today told the Delhi High Court that a comprehensive e-mail policy will be formed in four weeks for official communication by government officers so that the data will not be transferred to a server outside India.
Appearing for the Centre, counsel Sumit Pushkarna submitted a draft policy before a bench of justices B D Ahmed and Vibhu Bakhru and said "the government is on the verge of finalising the e-mail policy and the same will be placed before the court within four weeks."
The bench said "it is an important issue. Do it fast. We are sure the new policy will be in line with the provisions of Public Records Act."

The Centre's lawyer was answering to a court's query about the government's stand on the petitioner's allegation that government officials are using social networking sites by opening accounts like gmail, hot mail, yahoo and other similar e-mail Ids, whose servers are out side the country, for official communications instead of using the government server-national informatics centre(nic.In).
The court was hearing a PIL filed by former BJP leader N Govindacharya contending the use of e-mail Ids whose servers are out side the country and transfer of the 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."

The petitioner's counsel Virag Gupta had earlier alleged Delhi Police, Indian Railways and others have created accounts on social networking sites despite government departments being barred from doing so under the law.