The Ministry of Urban Development of the Government of India has decided to stop physical printing of Government of India’s Gazette Notifications and has introduced e-publishing of the same, putting an end to the long wait for the important documents. This has been announced by the Government today (October 9, 2015). This shift to e-publishing came at the behest of Minister of Urban Development Shri M. Venkaiah Naidu from the first of this month. It is pertinent to point out that e-gazettes were already available online for quite some time now, but the physical printing of the gazettes was also continuing. What the Government has now decided is to do away with the physical printing of the gazettes and use only the e-publishing.
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 taking exercise. The Ministries and Departments of government used to submit their Gazette publication requirements to the Government Printing Presses where the work of type setting, printing and publishing was undertaken. Hard copies were then made available for sale for usage 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.
You 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 3.50 pages of such notifications every year leading to a saving of publication cost of Rs.40 cr 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 of India Printing Presses are under the administrative control of the Ministry of Urban Development.
