Be Silent, Big Brother Is Watching: New Social Media Rules for J&K Employees

The Jammu and Kashmir government on Tuesday issued a government order on social media policy prohibiting its employees from criticizing the government on social media platforms.  The order further warns that the personal social media activities of employees will be monitored by law enforcement agencies and calls for ‘legal action against them if anything they post or share is against the state’s interests’.

The order dated December 26 aimed at providing guidance on “correct use of social media” by government employees, notes:

“No government employee through any post, tweet or otherwise discuss or criticise on social media any policy pursued or action taken by the government nor shall he in any manner participate in any such discussion or criticism that takes place on social media pages/communities or on micro blogs.”

The social media policy also prohibits employees from posting, updating, sharing or promoting status or posts that are ‘contentious or has the potential to create governance or law and order issues or are seen to propagate anything which is anti-social, anti-national or illegal’.

Calling the order by the BJP supported PDP government as ‘dictatorial and regressive’, MLA from Kulgam constituency Mohammed Yousuf Tarigami said:

“At a time when the government is claiming remarkable success in bringing the state, back on the tracks of normalcy; restricting the use of social media, not only belies its tall claims, it has also the negative potential to further alienate a substantial proportion of the masses.”

However, the government seems to be encouraging its employees to use social media to help the state on PR campaigns, which critics call as ‘government propaganda’. The order asks employees to help“removing misapprehensions, correcting mis-statements and refuting disloyal and seditious propaganda.”

 “The measure is highly undemocratic and arbitrary”, noted Tarigami. He added that in a democracy  ‘the employees are not serfs’ and do not require any guidelines on how they should ‘express themselves even on the social networking’.

The social media order comes in wake of the increasing resentment among people against the government in the valley. Around sixty government employees were sacked during the 2016 mass protests against the killing of militant leader Burhan Wani by security forces. A number of state government employees used social media platforms to criticise the Mehbooba Mufti government’s handling of the protests in which more than 100 people were killed by the security forces.

According to reports, two months back, Ajaz Parray, an employee of Rural Development Department, was suspended after he posted a Facebook status criticising the state government a “failure” after the braid-chopping incidents in the Valley.

The new social media order point towards attempts by the state government to target social media platforms, which are being increasingly used by people to criticise the human right violations.  In April, the state government clamped a one-month ban on 22 social media services, including Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp.