Babus will need to be careful what they say, or draw, on social media.
The Center on Tuesday
proposed changes to the rule book to explicitly treat criticism of government
policies on social media as a violation of conduct rules. And the threat of
disciplinary action is not limited to the written word. It includes caricatures
that are uncharitable to the government too.
The proposal comes weeks
after an IAS officer Ajay Gangwar ‘liked’ a Facebook post critical of Prime
Minister Narendra Modi and praised first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.
“Let me know the mistakes
that Nehru should not have committed...Is it his mistake that he prevented all
of us from becoming Hindu Talibani Rashtra in 1947?...” he wrote in the post,
an oblique rebuttal to continuing attacks on Nehru by BJP leaders.
Gangwar, who was Barwani
collector, was transferred to the secretariat in Bhopal by the BJP’s Madhya
Pradesh government and told to give an explanation.
Government officials have
always been barred from criticising government policy or making statements that
embarrass the Centre’s relations with a state government or a foreign country.
But the provision only
spoke about criticism made in a radio broadcast, public media (such as
television) or documents. Social media was not clearly covered.
The change now fixes this
gap.
“The member of service
shall also not make any such statement on television, social media or any other
communication application,” the draft rule, sent by the Centre’s department of
personnel & training to state governments for their views, said. It will be
applicable to anonymous and pseudonymous posts by officials too.
The restriction, however,
is not unique to India.
Back in 2011, a British
civil servant, identified at the end of a 7-month investigation, was dismissed
for mocking ministers through an anonymous Twitter account. Next year, a
Sergeant in the US Marines was sacked for a Facebook post critical of US
President Barack Obama. In 2013, an immigration officer lost her job in
Australia for posting tweets critical of the country’s asylum policy. She too
had tweeted from an anonymous account but it didn’t help.
In India, governments and
courts have taken a more liberal view of officials criticising its policy.
A senior IAS officer
serving in the central government who criticised the Election Commission in
2005 was only sent back to his cadre, West Bengal, in 2005. And the Supreme
Court shielded another officer – now fertilizer secretary VS Pandey -- from
penalties in 2014 for remarks against corruption in the government in his
petition.
A government source said
the existing rules were primarily addressed at criticism made by officials in
traditional television and print media, not the new media. “The change
primarily seeks to clarify the situation and not leave any scope for
misinterpretation,” he said.
For now, the changes are
being made to the conduct rules for the three All India Services – Indian
Administrative Service, Indian Police Service and Indian Forest Service.
Once the government
notifies the changes after reviewing suggestions from the state governments,
similar changes will be made to a separate set of the conduct rules applicable
for other employees too.