Telangana Govt puts veil over GOs

​Hyderabad: 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.