HC issues notices on PIL plea to make all GOs public

Those important to general public not made available, says petitioner

The Telangana High Court on Wednesday ordered notices to the State government over a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) petition questioning its intention in not making public all Government Orders (GOs) it had issued.

A citizen from L.B. Nagar of Hyderabad, Perala Shekhar Rao, who filed the plea, requested the HC to instruct the government to appoint a senior officer to update its official website. Pleading for instructions to ensure all GOs were uploaded in future on the website, the petitioner asked the HC to direct the government to make available for public all GOs which it had issued earlier, but did not upload.

After hearing the petitioner’s counsel, a division bench comprising Chief Justice Raghvendra Singh Chauhan and Justice A. Abhishek Reddy passed direction to serve notices to General Administration Directorate and Principal Secretary for Revenue who were made respondents in the plea. Since formation of Telangana State on June 2, 2014 to August 15, 2019, the State government issued 1,04,171 GOs.

However, 42,462 of them were missing from the government’s official website, he stated. This veil over all GOs was only to safeguard their political interest and this was irrational, he charged. While GOs related to payment of less than ₹500 towards mobile phone bill payment of top officers were posted on the website, those important to general public were not made available, he told the court.

Though the government in the erstwhile united State of Andhra Pradesh too withheld some GOs from public interface on the ground of confidentiality, the number of such undisclosed GOs was much less, he said in the plea.

In 2017, the Telangana government issued GO M.S. No. 4 making it mandatory for all the departments to update data and information on their respective websites. This was to be done in compliance with the Guidelines of Government of India Websites (GGIW). Even Section 4 (1) c of the Right to Information Act too says that all relevant government documents should be made available to public, the petitioner contended.