Warning employees against going online with the criticism of the policies of the government, the Union Territory (UT) administration of Jammu & Kashmir on Friday said the employees who don’t comply with the regulation could face dismissal or premature retirement under The Jammu and Kashmir Civil Services (Classification, Control and Appeal) Rules, 1956.

Asking employees to strictly comply with the earlier set of elaborate guidelines regarding use of social media by government employees notified on 26 December 2017, the circular ordered that no government employee shall, by any utterance, writing or otherwise discuss or criticize 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.

It is pertinent to mention here that the order in 2017 was issued when the PDP-BJP coalition government was in power in J&K. The fresh circular has been issued by Sanjeev Verma, secretary to J&K government.

The employees have also been barred from posting such comments that are 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 or abroad.

The circular ordered that 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. 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, however, clarified that the guidelines are not intended to dissuade the employees or departments from using social media for positive and constructive purposes.

It has been ordered that government employees should refrain from indulging in unwarranted debates and discussions and sharing, commenting, posting inappropriate posts or content on social media platforms. Violation of these guidelines shall tantamount to misconduct and invite disciplinary action against the delinquent official under the relevant rules, the circular warned.

It ordered all administrative secretaries, deputy commissioners and heads of departments to immediately proceed against the employees violating these instructions.

It is worth mentioning that the J&K government has already prematurely retired several employees on the charges of indulging in anti-national and terror activities. However, a J&K cadre IAS officer, who had submitted his resignation before forming a political party and also indulged in posting objectionable comments on social media, was recently appointed on a plum post in the central secretariat.