Hyderabad: The Telangana High Court has directed the state government to immediately upload all Government Orders (GOs), notifications, rules and circulars on the official websites of all departments, ensuring they are easily accessible to the public.
Justice Surepalli Nanda, hearing a writ petition on Tuesday, stressed that the government must strictly implement earlier directions of a Division Bench in a 2022 public interest litigation and ensure complete transparency in governance.
Court’s key directions
Justice Nanda ordered that all GOs, circulars, rules and notifications issued by any department must be placed on the concerned department’s official website without delay.
The Court emphasised that citizens have an unquestionable right to access government decisions and policies that affect their lives, and that transparency in governance is not optional but a fundamental requirement of democracy.
The judge directed the government to strictly follow the guidelines in G.O.Ms No.4 dated 10 April 2017, which mandates that all departments maintain updated websites and publish all official documents in the public domain.
The earlier Division Bench order, which had asked the government to appoint a senior officer to oversee the uploading of GOs and to regularly update them, must now be fully implemented, the Court made clear.
Petitioner’s arguments
The petition was filed by Errolla Srinivas, former chairman of the Telangana State SC/ST Commission, through his counsel Ramavarapu Chandrasekhar Reddy. The petitioner argued that despite clear statutory and administrative mandates, a large number of GOs remain unavailable to the public, undermining transparency and accountability.
Citing an RTI reply, the petitioner’s counsel told the court that between 7 December 2023 and 26 January 2025, the government issued 19,064 GOs, but only 3,290 were found in the public domain, leaving 15,774 GOs inaccessible to citizens. For example, the Finance Department had issued 3,720 GOs in that period, but only 17 were placed online.
The petitioner also pointed out that GOs conferring cabinet status on non‑cabinet ministers Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka, P Jithender Reddy, Adityanath Das and Srinivas Raju were not visible on official websites, raising concerns about selective disclosure of important decisions.
Transparency and accountability
Justice Nanda observed that when government decisions are not made public, it deprives citizens of their right to know and creates conditions conducive to corruption.
The Court noted that easy access to GOs and circulars is essential for citizens to claim their legal rights and entitlements, including benefits under welfare schemes, education, healthcare and subsidised services.
The judge stressed that the government cannot function in secrecy and that the principles of natural justice and the Right to Information Act require that all policy‑affecting orders be placed in the public domain. The Court disposed of the petition after recording the government’s obligation to comply with the Division Bench’s 2022 order and the 2017 GO on e‑governance.
Political reaction
Reacting to the High Court order, BRS leader and former minister T Harish Rao described it as a “slap in the face” of the “so‑called people’s government.”
In a social media post, he told chief minister A Revanth Reddy that merely calling the government “people’s rule” is not enough; the government must reveal what it is doing behind the veil of “dark government orders”.
Harish Rao claimed that the PIL filed by Errolla Srinivas, based on RTI data, has exposed the Congress government’s “drama” of hiding GOs while claiming to provide transparent governance.
However, supporters of the current government have countered by pointing to the record of the previous BRS regime, noting that during its tenure (2014–2019), only about 60,700 out of over 1,04,000 GOs were placed in the public domain.
