Srinagar (Jammu and Kashmir): The Jammu and Kashmir government on Friday issued a set of guidelines over the use of social media by the government employees. As per a circular issued to this effect by the General Administration Department, employees, directly or indirectly, shall not publish, post or release any information on social media that is considered confidential or that is not meant for public dissemination, nor shall they pass any official document or any part thereof to any Government employee or any such person to whom he is not authorized to communicate such document or information.
No Government employee shall, through any post, tweet or otherwise, discuss or criticize on social media, any policy pursued or action taken by the Government, nor shall he/she, in any manner, participate in any such discussion or criticism on social media pages/communities/ microblogs,” reads the circular adding “No Government employee shall post, tweet or share content that is political or anti-secular and communal in nature or subscribe to pages, communities or twitter handles and blogs of such nature”.
The government said that no employee shall himself/herself or through any person dependent on him/her for maintenance, or under his care or control, “undertake any such activity on social media which is, or tends directly or indirectly to be, subversive of the Government as by law established in the Country on in the Union territory”.
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It said that the Government employee “may, for the purpose or removing misapprehensions, correcting mis-statements, and refuting disloyal and seditious propaganda, defend and explain to the public the policy of Government in his posts and tweets on social media”. It further said that the government employees shall not post on social media, “any such content or comments about co-workers or individuals, that are vulgar, obscene, threatening, intimidating or that violate the conduct rules or employees”.
Besides, no Government employee shall post grievances pertaining to their workplace on social media in the form of videos, posts, tweets or blogs or in any other form, “but will follow the already established channels of complaint redressal existing in the departments”, the circular said. It further said that the government employees shall not indulge in “sharing/partaking in so- called giveaways and contests on social media platforms, which are actually scams in disguise, as they could unknowingly spread malware or trick people into giving away sensitive data by sharing it on their profiles”.
With regard to the punishments, penalties ranging from censure, fine not exceeding one month’s pay; withholding of increments and/or promotion; reduction to a lower post and/or a lower time-scale and/or to a lower stage in time-scale; recovery from pay of the whole or part of any pecuniary loss caused to Government by negligence or breach of orders may be imposed.
Besides, premature retirement on proportionate pension other than that specified in rule 226 (2) of Jammu and Kashmir Civil Service Regulations, removal from the service of the State which does not disqualify from future employment; dismissal from the service of the State which ordinarily disqualifies from future employment, may also be attracted in case of non-compliance, the circular said.
