UP top cop directs police to communicate with citizens on Twitter

DGP, UP Police Javeed Ahmad has issued six-point directions to all police units in the state to become active on microblogging site Twitter.

The director general of police Javeed Ahmad has issued six-point directions to all police units in the state to become active on microblogging site Twitter. In his direction, he said, “Social media has become an empowered medium to directly communicate with people and it has become necessary for police to adopt it.”

UP’s Director General of Police Javeed Ahmad (above) has issued six-point directions to all police units in the state to become active on microblogging site Twitter. (HT File Photo)

Ahmad reviewed the accounts of all district police departments and issued directions on Saturday for better implementation of social media to interact with citizens. Aiming at standardisation, the directions have asked all district police departments to ready their respective handles with the name of their respective districts and told them to use similar profile picture, bio data and header picture as used by UP police’s verified twitter handle, @Uppolice.

The directions have asked all superintendents of police (SPs), senior superintendents of police (SSPs), deputy inspectors general (DIG, range) and inspectors general (IG, zone) to configure their twitter accounts on their CUG (official) mobile numbers.

The DGP has also directed for formation of a social media cell under the respective public relation officers (PROs) of SP, SSP, DIG, range, and IG, zone, to be functional from 8am to 10pm. The officials will soon be attending a social media workshop to be held at the DGP office at Lucknow.

Rahul Srivastava, PRO to the DGP, said that the training plan scheduled for next two months will begin with Meerut zone, then Lucknow zone and so on. At present, the 75 district police handles have a low follower base nearing 1,000 to 1,500.

“The idea is to bring transparency and remove bottlenecks in connecting with citizens. We also plan to streamline the Twitter account format with the district’s name followed by ‘police’. We are already in correspondence with Twitter and will get nearly 17 of our accounts in a proper format. After bringing uniformity in district police Twitter handles, our next target will be to verify the handles. We also plan to invite the Twitter team to help us to tap the power of the microblogging site even more,” he said.