BharatNotes Gazette
noun; verb (transitive)Usage in a UPSC answer
Once a candidate's name is notified in the Gazette of India, the appointment acquires legal sanctity, transforming an executive selection into a formally recorded act of the State.
Synonyms
Word Family
gazette (v), gazetted (adj), gazetteer (n), ungazetted (adj)
Root
French gazette; Italian gazzetta; Venetian gazeta = small coin (price of the newspaper, 16th-c. Venice)
Etymology
From French gazette, from Italian gazzetta, from Venetian gazeta ("a small coin"), named for the price of the newspaper in 16th-century Venice; first attested in English c. 1607.
Memory Hook
A "gazette" began as a single Venetian coin (the gazeta) you paid to read the news — so picture handing over one small coin to buy the official "news-sheet" of the State.
How This Word Works in UPSC Writing
An official journal of record. Its constitutional importance is that publication in the Gazette is frequently what gives a legal act effect, since a statute, rule, notification or appointment commonly operates from the date of its publication, so the Gazette is not a report of a decision already made but the instrument through which the decision acquires legal force. That is the sense in which a person's rights may change on a date they had no practical means of knowing, which is the argument for accessible and timely publication. The word carries a second and quite separate meaning in Indian history, because the earliest newspapers were styled gazettes, beginning with James Augustus Hicky's Bengal Gazette of 1780, whose suppression for criticising the administration established at the very outset the pattern of contest between press and colonial state that ran through the Vernacular Press Act and beyond.
Don’t Confuse It With
A Gazette is the official journal in which laws, rules and appointments are published, and publication is often what brings them into legal effect rather than merely announcing them. A notification is the instrument so published. A gazetted officer holds a post whose appointment is published in the Gazette, which is the origin of both the term and the authority to attest documents. In the historical sense a gazette was simply a newspaper, as with Hicky's Bengal Gazette of 1780.
Hindi Meaning
राजपत्र (rājpatra); अधिसूचना (adhisūchnā) for a notification.
Common Questions
- Why does publication in the Gazette matter legally?
- Because many laws, rules and appointments take effect from the date of publication, so the Gazette is the instrument that gives them legal force rather than a record of a decision already effective.
- What was Hicky's Bengal Gazette?
- India's first printed newspaper, started in 1780, which was suppressed for criticising the administration and so began the long contest between the press and the colonial state.
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