Government of India has refused to divulge information on the procurement of Rafale Jets

HYDERABAD: While a debate is raging over the non-disclosure of details of procurement in Rafale Deal, the Hyderabad based data security researcher Srinivas Kodali has revealed that defence imports and exports data had been leaked on the private website over the years.

Though Central Board of Excise and Customs (renamed as Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs) stopped publishing the data set about imports and exports from November 25, 2016, it is still available on websites like Zauba.com, alleged Srinivas.

Srinivas Kodali tweeted on Thursday: “You can easily search for the items and cost of defence procurement, published by the customs board for years. All the fuss of national security over Rafale Deal is meaningless."

Kodali told TOI on Thursday, "The data that has been published by CBEC over the years was picked up by private players to publish on their sites, which served as market intelligence for traders and small businesses. The data contained near real-time trade data with details of every export and import in an out of India, along with their quantities, destination and origin including the defence, navy procurement. I brought it to the notice of Indian authorities that https://www.zauba.com/shipment_search will yield all the results, but no action was taken.” 

A simple search with a keyword like ‘defence’ yielded 68,411 shipment records with details of description, port of origin, quantity, price, origin country. A search with a keyword defence yields 54644 records including submarine parts, periscope and other details of sensitive defence procurement. However, the Rafale deal procurement are not available as CBEC stopped giving data from November 2016.

Wing commander TJ Reddy (Retired) of Indian Air Force Association said, "Revealing defence procurement details is not safe for the country. What exactly defence is buying and specific details should not be revealed. It is not the question of transparency. It is the question of national security. All the minute details will help enemy know our weaponry capabilities."