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RTI gag revoked: TVK government's 'police state' order collapses under opposition fire
The TVK government revoked its order exempting Tamil Nadu's law-and-order department from the RTI Act, six days after issuing it, following opposition charges that it was 'an open effort to turn Tamil Nadu into a police state'. The department holds inquiry reports on police firings, custodial deaths and torture.
The TVK government has revoked its own order exempting Tamil Nadu's Public (Law and Order) Department from the Right to Information Act — just six days after issuing it — after opposition parties branded the move "an open effort to turn Tamil Nadu into a police state."
The revocation, announced on Sunday, scraps Government Order Ms No. 57 of the Human Resources Management (R) Department, dated September 21, 2026, which had placed the law-and-order department outside the RTI Act's reach under Section 24(4).
The department is no ordinary office: it holds inquiry reports on police firings, custodial deaths and police torture. Had the exemption stood, citizens would have lost access to exactly the records that expose abuse of power.
Opposition leaders said the order was designed to bury inconvenient truths — how many custodial deaths occurred, which police firings were ever probed, what the inquiries actually found. In a state where custodial violence has a long and bloody record, shielding those files reads as an admission that there is something to hide.
The climbdown is the second U-turn in days for the young Vijay government: it follows the suspension of two highways engineers after Hindi signboards appeared on a Thoothukudi highway, also under opposition pressure. Former chief minister M.K. Stalin has accused the government of "testing the waters" and reversing course only when caught.
The pattern is becoming this government's signature: float an order, weather the outrage, withdraw quietly. A government confident of its mandate does not govern by trial balloon.
For now, the records stay open. The question the episode leaves behind is simpler and harder: why did a government that promised clean governance try to lock its own law-and-order files away in the first place?
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