Telangana High Court directs state to publish all government orders, circulars and notifications immediately

The petition highlighted a significant gap between the number of orders issued and those made public. The petitioner’s counsel, Ramavaram Chandrashekar Reddy, presented a Right to Information (RTI) response from the Department of Information Technology, Electronics and Communications stating that 19,064 government orders were issued across all state departments between December 7, 2023, and January 26, 2025. However, only 3,290 of these orders (approximately 17 per cent) are available in the public domain, leaving 15,774 orders missing or inaccessible to the public. He submitted that orders conferring cabinet minister rank and status to several individuals were not found on any government portal or website.

Srinivas pointed to an April 10, 2017, government order (G.O.MS.No.4) that mandates that all departments maintain websites with updated data in compliance with Government of India guidelines. He argued that accessibility to these documents empowers citizens to claim legal rights and entitlements, such as basic education, healthcare, and subsidised services. Without this information, it remains difficult for the common man to scrutinise public actions or provide feedback on policy planning.

Srinivas’s counsel also referred to a 2022 order of the high court on a PIL petition of 2019 that had already directed the state to follow G.O.MS.No.4 and upload missing orders within eight weeks.