Uttar Pradesh Government Departments Told To Open Twitter Accounts

All government departments in Uttar Pradesh have been directed to open Twitter accounts within a week to communicate with people effectively and also to highlight their work. "Through these Twitter accounts, grievances of the people can be resolved timely with coordination between departments," Principal Secretary of Information Awanish Kumar Awasthi said during a two-day workshop on "effective use of social media in government works".

He said it will help people to connect with the government. The move has been initiated after Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath asked the information department to ensure that all departments join Twitter as the central government did.

The state police Twitter handle @Uppolice, which has over 1,77,000 followers, is providing help in solving grievances of the people. Mr Adityanath, whose twitter handle is @myogiadityanath has 5,22,000 followers and through it, he highlights his daily achievements and engagements.

The state police had launched the Twitter-based grievance redressal service last year and has addressed lakhs of complaints since then. Uttar Pradesh is the first state in the country which is using Twitter service at all its police stations to redress grievances of people in order to have a better connect with them, police officers said.

These initiatives were previously taken by the centre mainly by ministries like the External Affairs, Railways and Commerce. The whole process is based on Twitter's customer relation management platform in which complaints are forwarded to the districts concerned with a particular code that is generated for the complaint.

Through this workshop, which will continue for two days, the information department aims to train its information officers to effectively work on this social media platform. State Information Minister Neelkanth Tiwari, and senior officers including Director of Information AK Jha and others were present at the workshop.