‘Declare removal of phone numbers, email addresses of Ministers from website illegal’

It’s not exempted from disclosure as per law: DMK MLA

DMK MLA Palanivel Thiagarajan has appealed to the Madras High Court to declare the sudden removal of official phone numbers and email addresses of of Ministers from Tamil Nadu government’s website as illegal.

Mr. Thiagarajan, son of former Minister and Speaker P.T.R Palanivel Rajan, has filed a PIL petition in this regard. The court is likely to take up the matter for hearing on Monday.

In the petition, the MLA said the official website of the Government of Tamil Nadu,

www.tn.gov.in , was designed and developed by Tamil Nadu State Centre, National Informatics Centre and its State Informatics Officer is the relevant officer for operations.

On July 22, the phone numbers and email addresses of Ministers were suddenly removed for reasons best known to the authorities concerned.

Alleging that the removed information was official and would not fall under the category of information exempted from disclosure as per law, Mr. Thiagarajan said the act is in contravention of the Right to Information Act 2005.

He also submitted that people of his constituency had brought the matter to his knowledge claiming that they were unable to send any information to the Ministers.

It may be recalled that actor Kamal Haasan recently tweeted calling upon his fans to send complaints and letters on corruption to the Ministers through emails.