GUWAHATI: In a bid to connect better with citizens through social media, Assam Police aims to launch Twitter and Facebook handles for all the police districts in the state by the end of this month as part of its social media initiative, “NagarikMitra.”
While the department has started activating the dormant Facebook and Twitter pages of the district police departments, it has started opening up new ones for those districts which don’t have one already.
“A few districts had their own Facebook handles, but those had become dormant by now with little to no activities over the recent period. We are reactivating those handles. We will also have Twitter handles for the same. We are opening accounts for those districts which don’t have their accounts. There will be personnel dedicated to those accounts that will not only share information from the police’s side, but will also interact with other users,” a senior official in charge of social media said.
So far, the Twitter handles for Darrang, Udalguri, Jorhat, Goalpara and Hailaknadi have already been started while a search in Facebook reveals that there are pages for Goalpara, Darrang, Majuli, Jorhat, Dhubri, Bongaigaon, Sivasagar, DimaHasao, Cachar and Hailakandi districts.
NagarikMitra, which literally translates to “citizen’s friend,” is an initiative taken by Assam Police earlier last month to transform the police into a “SMART efficient citizen centric service delivery mechanism” to curb the social media evils by educating people through social media platforms.
Under this initiative, the department has upgraded and made the official Facebook and Twitter accounts more active.
“We have made our posts more frequent. Once all the pages are opened and properly activated, we will take this campaign to Instagram,” the official said.
Over this one month, since the initiative was started till July 17, the Assam Police Facebook page was visited by 8.47 lakh people and the Twitter was accessed by more than 2 lakh people.
The Assam Police Facebook page has touched 29,000 likes in four weeks of opening and it has 3,882 followers on Twitter.
NagarikMitra to sensitise regarding fake news
A major work of the team of police officials in the NagarikMitra - an initiative that was started by Assam Police post the lynching of two Guwahati youths in Karbi Anglong because of fake news circulated on WhatsApp – will be to scan through various social media platforms to identify fake news and inform people through the department’s social media platforms.
“Of late, fake news has become a major security concern and it is seen that they have incited mob violence not just here but throughout the nation. So, one of the crucial works of the team will be to monitor the various social media platforms to find fake news. Once identified, those reports will be flagged in our Facebook and Twitter accounts and we will inform people about the same,” a senior official of Assam Police, in charge of monitoring social media, said.
He further added that the team will also try to identify the source of such fake news and will take disciplinary action against those who were found spreading the same.
“To make people aware we will also publish the various Indian Penal Code sections and the punishments attached to those so that people know on what might happen if they engage in disseminating fake news on social media platforms,” the official added.
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The state, along with the rest of the nation, has lately become very aware after fake news of child-lifters running amok, disseminated through WhatsApp, incited mob violence that allegedly took 28 lives throughout the nation.
In Assam, a sound engineer Nilotpal Das (29), and a businessman Abhijeet Nath (30), on June 8 last, were pulled out of their vehicle at Panjuri in Karbi Anglong district and beaten to death by a mob purely on suspicion of being child-lifters, following the fake news.