The U-turn government: TVK keeps withdrawing its own orders in its first months

Six days. That is how long the Vijay government's order to shield its law-and-order machinery from public scrutiny survived before it was withdrawn. On September 21, the government's Human Resources Management department issued G.O. Ms No. 57, exempting the Public (Law and Order) Department from the Right to Information Act, 2005, by classifying it as an "intelligence and security organisation" under Section 24(4) of the Act. The department handles some of the most sensitive files in the state: inquiry reports into police firings, custodial deaths and police torture. Had the exemption stood, citizens and journalists would have lost access to exactly the records that hold the state's coercive power to account. Opposition parties called it an attempt to build a police state — criticism the government initially brushed off. Law Minister C.T.R. Nirmal Kumar defended the order, arguing that information about sensitive matters, including communal clashes, needed protection, and said the government would "reconsider" only in response to public concerns. The concerns arrived quickly, and from an uncomfortable direction: members of the ruling alliance itself, along with transparency advocates, condemned the move. On September 27 — six days later — the government revoked the order in full, announcing that the exemption "stands revoked". The RTI episode is not an isolated misstep. It is one entry in a growing ledger of reversals that has become the defining feature of the Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam government's first months in office. The government has withdrawn a directive concerning student participation in political protests, and cancelled an appointment made to the Chief Minister's office — each decision announced, defended, and then quietly undone. Supporters describe the reversals as responsiveness: a government willing to listen and correct course. Critics see something else — an administration that issues consequential orders first and consults stakeholders later, if at all. Government orders are not drafts for public reaction; they are the machinery of the state, and every reversal leaves behind a paper trail of confusion for the officials expected to implement them. The deeper question is what the pattern reveals about how this government governs. A new administration is entitled to a learning curve. But the RTI order was not a rookie error on a minor file — it was a deliberate attempt to place the police beyond the reach of the public's right to know, abandoned only when the backlash reached the ruling coalition's own ranks. That suggests the reversals are not evidence of listening. They are evidence of being caught.