Long wait for Gazette notifications over as govt shifts to e-publishing

In a major initiative, the ministry of urban development has stopped physical printing of government of India's Gazette notifications and started e-publishing it, ending the long wait for the important documentary notifications.

Minister of urban development M Venkaiah Naidu said the shift to e-publishing would start from the first of this month.

Gazette Notification is an important legal requirement to validate, authenticate and to make effective various kinds of laws, Acts, rules, orders and government decisions. All user groups had to wait for a few months for copies of such notifications as physical printing of the same was a time consuming exercise.

As per the practice, ministries and departments of government submit their Gazette publication requirements to the government printing presses where the work of typesetting, printing and publishing was undertaken. Hard copies were then made available for sale or use by all government and private users.

Seeking to end such delays, ministry of urban development has directed the department of publication to stop physical printing and switch over to e-publishing of all Gazette notifications on its official website http://www.egazette.nic.in within five days of receipt of the same from respective ministries and departments.

The records for the gazette will be maintained by the department for all future references.

User groups and citizens can download and print all Gazette notifications free of charge. Under the provisions of the Information Technology Act, 2000, downloaded and printed Gazette copies are sufficient for all official and legal purposes.

E-publishing assumes importance since many Gazette notifications pertain to projects of national interest, including matters related to land acquisition. Quick availability of the same enables early start for further processes.

Besides substantial saving in time, e-publishing does away with the need for printing about 35 million pages of such notifications every year, leading to a saving of publication cost of Rs40 crore per year being incurred on 90 tonnes of paper besides power, chemicals, color, dyes etc and as such is a major environment friendly initiative.

The government printing presses are under the administrative control of the ministry of urban development.