New Delhi: In a bid to maintain secrecy in case of classified information, the government has asked ministry of home and defence to take necessary steps to plug in media leakage of such content. It has also suggested fixing responsibility in case such information comes in public domain without authorisation.

This directive has come following national security adviser Ajit Doval had asked for taking action against those responsible where leakage of classified information undermines national security.

Accordingly, the ministries of home, defence and telecom, among others, have been asked to crackdown of middlemen roaming in these ministries as public relation officers of big corporate houses or representatives of media publications, which are either never printed or published for mere record sake.

Sources privy to such a directive said, some of the secret notes of Intelligence Bureau and defence ministry were often leaked from Department of Telecom to these alleged middlemen of corporate houses who start leaking documents purely because of commercial interests.

Anti-terror squads of various police forces have also been advised to plug leakage of classified information shared with them by central intelligence agencies.