The U-turn government: Vijay's TVK rules by press release, retreats by embarrassment
First the TVK exempted its own law-and-order machinery from the RTI Act, then revoked the order within six days under fire. The pattern of reversed decisions is not flexibility — it is the signature of a government whose first instinct is opacity.
By The Justice news desk
· 2 min read
Fort St. George, Chennai, seat of the Tamil Nadu government. The RTI exemption order was born and died within six days. (File photo) Photo: Jan Van Ryne (1712–60) / Robert Sayer
A government reveals itself not in its press releases but in its first instincts. On September 21, the Tamil Nadu government led by Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay issued an order exempting the Public (Law and Order) Department from the Right to Information Act, 2005, invoking Section 24(4) to classify the department as an "intelligence and security organisation". Six days later, on September 27, the government revoked it.
The reversal followed a political storm. The move drew sharp criticism not only from transparency advocates but from the TVK's own alliance partners — the Congress and the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi. VCK chief Thol. Thirumavalavan termed the gazette notification "highly shocking", warning it would "pave the way for suppressing human rights", and demanded its withdrawal. Law Minister C. T. R. Nirmal Kumar defended the order, saying sensitive information needed protection, and indicated the government would "reconsider". It reconsidered. The order died within a week of its birth.
Supporters call this responsiveness: a young administration listening to feedback. That is the charitable reading. The more accurate reading is that this was never a considered policy at all. A government that exempts its own police machinery from citizens' questions, then retreats the moment its allies object, is not governing. It is improvising.
And the RTI order was not an isolated improvisation. The same administration has withdrawn a directive concerning student participation in political protests and cancelled an appointment to the Chief Minister's office, among other reversed decisions in its first months. A pattern has emerged: announce, provoke backlash, retreat, repeat.
Consider what the original instinct tells us. The Right to Information Act is the common citizen's audit of the state. Section 24(4) exemptions exist for genuine intelligence and security organisations — not for a state's general law-and-order department, whose daily work includes policing protests and detaining citizens. To shield precisely the state's coercive arm from scrutiny, without consultation or debate, is the tell. The defence — that sensitive information about communal clashes needed protection — collapses on inspection: the RTI Act already exempts information prejudicial to security or public order. The blanket order looks less like protecting secrets than protecting the secret-keepers.
To be fair, a democratic mechanism worked here: allies objected, activists organised, the press reported, and the order died. But accountability that only activates after the announcement is a poor substitute for a government that thinks before it acts.
A leftist paper should say plainly what this pattern means: a government whose first reflex is to hide its law-and-order apparatus from the people treats the people as subjects to be managed, not citizens to answer to. Transparency that arrives only after embarrassment is not transparency — it is damage control. The TVK came to power promising a new politics. Its first instinct, when tested, was the oldest politics of all: rule first, explain later, retreat when caught.
The RTI order is dead. The instinct that produced it is not. Watch for its next appearance.
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