The Hans India: Telangana: Sunday,
October 23, 2016.
In spite of
the tall claims day in and day out that the TRS administration has been
functioning transparently, in reality the government turned out to be opaque by
not uploading the government orders (GOs) in the government website keeping
people in the dark in the issues concerning them.
It is really
baffling that the Law department, which advises the government on various
issues to the administration, did not upload its own GOs in the government
website. The Official Secrets Act introduced by the British has been abolished
with the introduction of Right to Information Act on October 12, 2005.
Section 4
(1)(c) of the Right to Information Act envisages that the government should
publish all relevant facts while formulating important policies or announcing
the decision that affect public. Likewise, Section 4 (1) (d) of the Act says
that the government should provide reasons for its administrative or
quasi-judicial decisions to the affected persons.
However,
contrary to the rules the TRS administration did not post the GOs on the
government website. In all, the Telangana government did not upload 7,129 GOs
keeping them confidential and giving a blow to the rule of transparency.
For instance,
the Information Technology department headed by K T Rama Rao has not uploaded
33 GOs issued by the government during the last nine months. Municipal
Administration department which is also headed by him did not upload 407 GOs
and Industries and Commerce department did not upload 190 GOs. Likewise, the
Public Enterprises department did not upload 12 GOs in the official website of
Telangana Government, ‘goir.telangana.gov.in’.
The General
Administration Department headed by none other than Chief Minister K
Chandrashekar Rao is leading the lot by not uploading 1,304 GOs. Minorities
Welfare department also did not upload its 127 GOs. Noticeably, it is the Chief
Minister who asserts all the time that transparency is the government policy.
The united
Andhra Pradesh started uploading the GOs that affect people from January 1,
2008 in its official website ‘goir.ap.govt.in’ as per the provisions of the
Right to Information Act. The AP government in order to maintain
confidentiality of certain GOs has chosen to place only the number of the GO
and an empty document in the website describing it as confidential.
Moreover, if
the government cancelled the GO or withdrew it for some or other reason, the
government used to write in the website that the particular GO is ‘not
issued’.RTI activist Ganji Srinivasa Rao appealed to the united AP government
to reveal the information of the GOs which were not published between 2008 and
2011.
Since the
government did not respond in time, the activist appealed to Information
Commissioner against the Principal Secretaries of the Home and Revenue
departments. AP Information Commissioner Zannat Hussain on August 14, 2012
instructed the government to publish the GOs and subsequently, several hundreds
of GOs were publicised.
Information
regarding the release of several hundreds of crores of rupees for modernisation
of the police department among others was known to all. Likewise, Srinivasa Rao
also brought out information regarding GOs which revealed the corruption and
misappropriation of funds by the sub registrars.
The Telangana
government is continuing the legacy of the erstwhile AP government in
concealing the GOs that affect the lives of people in the name of
confidentiality. After it was widely reported in the media regarding the
confidential GOs, the Telangana government promptly closed down the official
website ‘goir.telangana.gov.in’ in the second week of February.
Generally,
the Telangana website contains the GOs regarding the details of daily release
of budget, government policies, departmental action taken against the
officials, transfer of IAS, IPS and other officials, details of public welfare
schemes, official postings, foreign tours of officials and ministers, payments
to contractors and appointment of committees among others.
The officials
,who were baffled over the series of court orders on various issues relating to
the government orders, have preferred not to publish the GOs to prevent
embarrassment to the government.
After the
website was closed, Congress leader Dasoju Shravan filed a writ petition in the
High Court of Hyderabad demanding reopening of the website. Subsequently, the
website was opened by the end of April.
The research
undertaken by RTI activist Ganji Srinivasa Rao conclusively proved that in
spite of the judicial decisions the officials did not change their way of
function in not publishing more than 7,000 GOs between January and September of
2015.
One look at
departmental-wise reveals that thousands of GOs remained unpublished. For
instance, the Finance department headed by Eatala Rajender did not upload 984
GOs occupying second place after the Chief Minister.
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