Meaning of wide circulation

The Supreme Court has held that the purpose of requiring newspaper publication of a government notification is to widely publicise the notification as much as possible. This is because Government Gazettes do not have a wide circulation and putting out a public notice of the notification only at convenient places in the locality would cover only in specific areas. The Court stated that publication should be in newspapers which have a reasonably good circulation in the locality. If the publication is made in obscure newspapers having insignificant circulation, that will defeat the very purpose of providing for publication in newspapers.

In the Supreme Court case given above, the Court was discussing a case where the notice had to be published in two newspapers (with at least one being in the regional language) to have a wider reach. In this case, one of the newspapers had a circulation of 28465 with a market share of 3% out of the total circulation of regional newspapers, and the other had a market share of 4%. The Court held that with regard to the circulation figures, the newspapers did not have a reasonably wide circulation in the locality.