More than 50 years after its creation, the 1962 India-China war report remains classified by the Indian government.

More than 50 years after its creation, the 1962 India-China war report remains classified by the Indian government. More than 50 years after its creation, the 1962 India-China war report remains classified by the Indian government.

Defence Minister Arun Jaitley, who once demanded that the Henderson Brooks-Bhagat report on the India-China war of 1962 be made public, has done a U-turn.

In a written reply to Rajya Sabha MP H.K. Dua, Jaitley said the release of the classified document "would not be in national interest".

"Government is aware of reports purporting to disclose part of the Henderson Brooks Report on the India-China war. This is a Top Secret document and has not been declassified so far. Further, release of this report, fully or partially or disclosure of any information related to this report would not be in national interest", said a release from the Defence Ministry.

The BJP, while in Opposition, criticised the UPA government for not making the report public.

"With the wisdom of hind sight I am of the oinion that the report's contents could have been made public some decades ago," Jaitley had said in March 2014.

In April 2010, then defence minister A.K. Antony told Parliament that the report could not be declassified because its contents "are not only extremely sensitive but are of current operational value."

This statement was criticised by Opposition parties as an attempt to hide policy failures of then-prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru to avoid hurting performance of his great-grandson, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, in the 2014 General Elections.

However, more than 50 years after its creation, the report remains classified by the Indian government. The only two copies of the 1963 report that clinically analysed independent India's worst military defeat, at the hands of the PLA in 1962, lay buried in the vaults of the defence ministry and army headquarters. Successive governments stubbornly refused to release it.