You are the Director of a Central PSU’s R&D centre. A foreign trade delegation, accompanied by your administrative Ministry’s Joint Secretary, is visiting a sensitive prototype lab. During the demonstration, the visiting senior diplomat photographs a circuit-board you know contains a non-public design feature funded by DRDO. The visiting team’s protocol officer asks you to permit the photograph as a ‘goodwill gesture’ to advance an MoU. The DRDO liaison is not present. The JS gives an oral nod. The MoU could secure a ₹2,800 crore export order. What course of action would you take? Justify with the values involved.

Dilemma: Diplomatic courtesy and a Rs 2,800 crore export MoU versus national-security obligations under the Official Secrets Act 1923 for a DRDO-funded non-public design feature photographed without DRDO clearance.

Stakeholders: DRDO and the wider defence ecosystem; the citizens of India (national security); the visiting delegation and the foreign State; the Joint Secretary giving the oral nod; MEA's protocol cell; the future export market; the PSU board; the Director's own probity record.

Options: (a) permit the photograph as 'goodwill' — a clear breach of the Official Secrets Act 1923 and the DRDO Visitor Protocol; (b) refuse rudely in the delegation's presence — diplomatic damage that the Vienna Convention 1961 does not require; (c) politely intervene under the lab's pre-agreed Visitor Photography Protocol, request on-the-spot deletion in the diplomat's presence, offer a controlled, DRDO-cleared photo session for non-sensitive equipment as an alternative, and brief MEA-MoD-Ministry in writing — the hard right.

Decision: Option (c). Reasons — fidelity to the Official Secrets Act 1923 and the DRDO Visitor Protocol (national security, integrity); the Nolan principle of leadership in handling a JS's oral order with a written follow-up under AIS (Conduct) Rules Rule 3(3); and the Vienna Convention 1961 limit on diplomatic privilege (rule-of-law).

Safeguard: Preserve CCTV; obtain the protocol officer's written acknowledgment of deletion; record the JS oral order in the note-sheet with a request for written confirmation; arrange the alternative controlled session; intimate DRDO Liaison and MEA same day.