Times
of India: Hyderabad: Saturday, 13 February 2016.
Three days
after a complete shutdown of government portal http: goir.telangana.gov .in
kicked up a furore with RTI activists assailing the move as an attempt to
sabotage transparency , the Telangana government said that they have disabled
it.
Turns out it
is not `virus' or `routine maintenance of the site' that forced the government
to blackout the portal -the only source of information for the public about
policy decisions taken by over 15 government departments by Telangana
government in the form of GOs released every day but lack of clarity on what
would constitute a government order (G.O) needing to be put up on public
domain! In fact, the blackout comes barely a month after city-based RTI
activist G Srinivasa Rao lodged a complaint with the Telangana chief secretary
, questioning the legality of keeping over 400 GOs `confidential' by the
government since June, 2014.
"We
found that 95% of the GOs uploaded on the official portal
http:goir.telangana.gov .in were trivial in nature like sanction of
reimbursement for incurring personal expenses during office work, without
having any connection with matters of public importance or policy
decisions.Hence, senior officials are now deliberating on what sort of GOs
should be made public," explained Jayesh Ranjan, secretary, information
technology , electronics & communications department, Telangana.He added
that hereafter, no GOs may be issued on personal and trivial issues like office
tours of government officials etc but only an `office memorandum' would be
issued instead.
When asked
when the portal would become functional again with changes incorporated as
desired by the government, he said that the committee deliberating the issue
has not been given any timeframe yet.
Meanwhile,
the government's blockage on the portal has left RTI activists infuriated as
they not only termed it a "retrograde step" but also
"illegal" under the RTI, Act 2005.
RTI activist
G Srinivasa Rao, who is fighting to get over 1,200 confidential GOs issued by
both Andhra Pradesh and Telangana since June, 2014 declassified, said that by
denying information on policy decision on the public domain itself amounts to
clear violation of sections 4 (1) (c) and 4 (1) (d) of the RTI Act.
"These
two sections state that every public authority shall publish all relevant facts
while formulating important policies or announcing the decisions which affect
public besides listing out reasons for all administrative decisions taken by
them," he said.
What's worse
is that such a move to curtail flow of information in public domain is likely
to be counterproductive, feels Rakesh Reddy Dubbudu, convenor of United Forum
for RTI campaign, Telangana.
"This is
because people have a right to know everything about the government and their
officials do in the course of their duties and functions unless such
information is not exempted under section 8 and 9 of the RTI Act," said
Rakesh Reddy , adding that any effort to block information will only add to
bombardment of government offices with huge number of RTI applications.
Meanwhile, P
Vijaya Babu, state information commissioner, termed the blackout of the portal
as an `act of negligence and carelessness on the part of authorities
concerned'. "Even if the portal is down due to technical glitches, the
officials are bound to mention it clearly on the website that it is under
construction or under maintenance and the time they needed to get the problem
rectified," he said.
In contrast,
the Andhra Pradesh government portal http:goir.ap.gov .in is working perfectly.
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