AP: Govt urged to restore public access to State GOs through its website

Former Secretary to the Central Government, EAS Sarma, urged the State government to restore public access to State government orders through its website

Visakhapatnam: Former Secretary to the Central Government, EAS Sarma, on Tuesday urged the State government to restore public access to State government orders through its website https://goir.ap.gov.in as required under the RTI Act.

In a letter addressed to Chief Secretary KS Jawahar Reddy, he noted that the earlier governments used to provide public access to State Government Orders through their website, but for some strange reason, the website in question had since gone blank, giving the impression that the present government is not interested in allowing the public to see the government’s orders which is in gross violation of the provisions of the RTI Act.

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“If it is not the intention of the government to do so, I will be constrained to draw the inference that the present government is afraid of public accessibility to the orders issued by it from time to time. Non-transparency in governance is a symptom of corruption and it also leads one to draw the conclusion that the government is issuing orders against the public interest. I demand that the government complies with Section 4 of the RTI Act, functioning in a manner that is consistent with the public interest,” he said.