A J&K government employee could lose his one-month salary, be demoted or terminated if he is found criticising the government’s policies on social media platforms, according to elaborate guidelines notified by the Lieutenant Governor’s (L-G) administration on Friday.
Fresh provisions have been incorporated in the Jammu and Kashmir Employees Conduct Rules, 1971 barring employees from commenting on political or government policies on social media. These provisions underline that no government employee shall, by any utterance, writing or otherwise discuss or criticise in public or in any meeting of any association or body any policy pursued or action taken by the government; nor shall he in any manner participate in any such discussion or criticism.
The rules notified suggest that no government employees shall, in any radio broadcast or in any document published in his own name or anonymously, pseudonymously or in the name of any other person or in any communication to the press or in any public utterance make any statement of fact or opinion, which is capable of embarrassing the relations between the Government of Jammu and Kashmir and the Government of India or the government of any other State in India.
It also bars the government employees from adverse comments on any current or recent policy or action of the Government of India, J&K or any other State government.
The penalties
The penalties for violating these new rules include censure, fine not exceeding one month’s pay, withholding of increments 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 the government by negligence or breach of orders, premature retirement, removal from the service of the State which does not disqualify from future employment, and dismissal from the service of the State which ordinarily disqualifies from future employment.
Sanjeev Verma, Commissioner/Secretary to the Government, said in the notice, “While using different social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. or instant messaging applications like WhatsApp, Telegram etc., employees have been seen to air disparaging views on subjects that they are expressly barred under rules to comment upon. Such actions range from unauthorised communication of official information and/or dissemination of patently wrong or misleading information, airing of political or communal views etc. under their real or assumed identities.”
“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 rules said. It asked the government employees that even any person dependent on him or her for maintenance should not “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 or in the Union Territory”.
It also barred the employees from sharing grievances pertaining to their workplace on social media in the form of videos, posts, tweets or blogs.
The L-G administration directed all administrative secretaries, deputy commissioners, heads of departments, managing directors “to immediately proceed against the employees working in their departments or offices who are found to have violated the guidelines”.
The administration has terminated the services of hundreds of locals in J&K since 2020 on the pretext of having links with militants, being relatives of separatist leaders, not furnishing accurate details at the time of applying for jobs and not following selection processes.
