VIJAYAWADA: The Andhra Pradesh High Court has asked the state government as to why it chose to stop uploading government orders on its official website even as the exercise was going on smoothly since 2008, and sought the reasons.
A division bench of Chief Justice P.K. Mishra and Justice Satyanarayana Murthy heard a batch of petitions including one filed by S.R. Anjaneyulu challenging the action of state government. They said, “The government did away with the uploading GOs by citing them as ‘top secret’, ‘secret’ and ‘confidential’.”
Petitioners’ counsel Yalamanjula Balaji argued that closing the government’s official website permanently was against sections 4 and 8 of the Right to Information Act, 2005. He pleaded that the action of the state government in categorising the GOs as top secret, secret and confidential and not uploading them was infringement of the fundamental rights guaranteed under Article 19 and 226 of the Constitution. He argued that the state government was intentionally not uploading the GOs to curtail the rights of the citizens.
The court directed the state government to file a report on how many GOs were issued and uploaded on the official website so far and also give specific reasons for not doing so now. The court opined that the state government should reconsider the matter and come up with a new policy, keeping in mind the provisions of the RTI Act.
The court adjourned the matter for the next hearing to December 28.
