Hyderabad: Telangana Government kept 9,951 government orders (GOs) passed in 2016 as secret.
By 2017, the number grew to 11,918. These government orders were termed as ‘internal orders’ and so far a total of 21,969 have been kept concealed and not uploaded on the State’s official website.
This act of the TRS government has brought down the transparency in governance from 100 percent in 2014 to 42 percent in 2017.
The Department of Municipal Administration and Urban Development, a portfolio held by caretaker Minister K.T. Rama Rao, for two consecutive years 2017 and 2018 has not uploaded a single order onto the website so far. Whereas the Roads and Building Department under Minister Tummala Nageshwara Rao made seven government orders public.
The state website was built to make decisions passed by the Telangana Government known to the public, by uploading all orders pertaining to activities approved in various departments.
The evidence collected from the MAUD department has revealed that the state agency in 2017 passed 20 GO Ms (miscellaneous) and 143 GO Rt (valid for a period of 5 years).
While in 2018, seven GO Ms and 94 Rt GO were passed.
However zero orders were uploaded which means a total of 268 GOs were kept for internal viewing only.
Similarly from documents collected from the Department of Road and Transport, in 2017, 284 GOs passed were hidden from the public as zero orders were uploaded.
And out of 164 decisions made in 2018, seven were made public.
The decision to conceal GOs terming them as ‘internal orders’ came about in February 2016. Reportedly a meeting was held by the Telangana state chief secretary where it was decided that G.Os will be classified into Public and Internal. Access to the latter category was limited to the Secretariat level only.
However this decision raises doubts on the transparency in governance.
“A PIL (14896) was filed in 2016 in the High Court requesting the court for appropriate orders for placing all the GOs on the website. However, since the last two years, the Government of Telangana has not filed a counter. Now that the government is dissolved, there seems to be no scope for a counter” said retired IFS officer M. Padmanabha Reddy.
