An important document was found lying on a photo-copier machine one morning about eight months ago in the ministry, soon after the new government came.

New Delhi: The Intelligence Bureau will soon formulate standard operating procedures to monitor the functioning of staff working in key economic and infrastructure ministries.

This comes after the Delhi police busted a racket where petroleum ministry employees were leaking confidential documents to outsiders, including representatives of top corporate houses.

Government sources said though intelligence agencies keep a discreet watch on employees of “sensitive ministries”, currently, this was done on a random basis, but now formal protocols will be set.

There has been a lot of concern at the government’s highest levels over the leakage of sensitive documents, with the national security adviser flagging the issue a few months back.

The ministries identified as “sensitive” include finance, defence, railways, power, coal, commerce, petroleum, surface transport, shipping and aviation.

The SOPs, now being drafted, include regular shadowing of employees, if there is the slightest doubt about their conduct, monitoring of hard disks and data of ministry computers to ensure they are not tampered with or copied, picking dedicated officers for control rooms that will monitor CCTVs installed on all floors of such ministries and departments.

Also, CISF personnel may be deployed on all floors of such ministries to regulate access control. Regular patrolling by the security staff will also be done even after work hours.