VISAKHAPATNAM: Former Union energy secretary EAS Sarma on Sunday demanded that the State government resume providing the public 100% access to all the GOs, as required under Section 4 of the Right to Information Act, and, in particular, make a public disclosure of the GO asking Discoms to seek loans from the public financial institutions to be able to pay Rs 1,234 crore to Hinduja National Power Corporation Limited (HNPCL), failing which they may seek judicial intervention.
In a letter to Chief Secretary KS Jawahar Reddy, Sarma said he has been trying to access the GOs issued by the government from time to time on several important matters, but he found that the present government has literally cut off public access to important GOs, especially those that ‘betray connivance’ with private companies.
He said he had written several times to the government in the past to come clean on GO 131 dated 31-7-2021 (hidden from the public view by marking it ‘confidential’) in which the State government had ‘illegally denotified’ a vast stretch of land with valuable archaeological evidence around the ancient Buddhist site near Visakhapatnam, but there has been no response whatsoever from the government.
“This clearly shows that the government wishes to benefit real estate developers and has been openly ensuring that the public is kept in the dark. Since the government has not chosen to respond to my letters, the only inference I can draw from this is that there is outright connivance between the State officials, also perhaps its political leaders and some private developers,” Sarma observed.
He said a more recent one, of keeping the public in the dark related to the government’s ‘surreptitious decision’ to pay Rs 1,234 crore to HNPCL towards ‘dues payable’ and, for that purpose, compel the Discoms to seek loans to be able to make such a payment. Apparently, the energy department fears that there will be a public outcry against it as the government and the local authorities have granted several undue concessions, one after the other, to HNPCL and the burden of every such concession has fallen on the public at large, he said.