All GOs to go offline from now in Andhra Pradesh

Amaravati: The Andhra Pradesh government has dispensed with the system of posting GOs online and in the process, has given a go-by to Section 4 of the Right to Information Act that mandates dissemination of all government information "widely and in such form and manner that is easily accessible to the public".

The system of posting Government Orders (GOs) online began in the then united Andhra Pradesh government under Chandrababu Naidu in the late 1990s. Following the enactment of the RTI Act in 2005, the YS Rajasekhara Reddy government made it a full-fledged exercise in 2008 and began posting all the GOs online to usher in complete transparency in administration.

Successive governments continued the initiative, but the AP government has now dispensed with the system altogether. Accordingly, General Administration Department Principal Secretary (Political) Revu Mutyala Raju circulated a note to all the departments, stating that the "system of generating numbers from the GOIR website is hereby dispensed with".

In a second note, Raju, who is also Additional Secretary to the Chief Minister, instructed the departments to maintain three (manual) registers for three series of GOs, as was done earlier (years ago). Interestingly, he cited the AP Secretariat Office Manual 2005 and the AP Government Business Rules related to the issue of GOs and also the system "prevailing in other States and Government of India".

"This is a completely flawed note. The Government of India only issues notifications and gazettes, not orders, and they are all posted online," a Special Chief Secretary, who served a stint at the Centre, pointed out. He lamented that such orders were "making us a laughingstock".

Senior bureaucrats pointed out that there was "nothing whatsoever" either in the Secretariat Manual or Business Rules that prohibited making Government Orders public. If that were the case, what happened all these years would be illegal. "But it is not. The GAD note appears to be only a cover (up)," the senior bureaucrat remarked. "Except matters relating to security and vigilance, any GO is a public document. The RTI Act mandates that all such documents are placed in the public domain, not hidden," another senior IAS officer noted. The government on August 2 started posting 'blank' orders on the official website and at least 60 such GOs were issued in the last fortnight. Now it has completely done away with the system and the GOIR showed a complete blank on Tuesday.

The growing number of court litigations in recent times and the judicial scrutiny of many Government Orders are reportedly the reason behind the decision to keep the GOs under wraps. The High Court struck down a GO that sought to convert all schools in the State to English medium of instruction. It had also suspended a GO related to the delegation of village panchayats' powers to the village secretariats.

The court also suspended a GO, seeking to relocate the State Vigilance Commission to Kurnool. "There are many such instances. In fact, during an informal chat with some officers recently, a High Court judge himself has observed that many writ petitions are being filed immediately after a GO is issued. He suggested to the government to use discretion in issuing the GOs (to avoid litigation)," a top bureaucrat revealed. The government, though, apparently decided to go discreet completely, he remarked.