UP government departments not keen on opening Twitter accounts

Government departments in Uttar Pradesh do not seem to be interested in opening their Twitter accounts as most have not complied with the one week deadline set about a month ago. The state has 84 departments and hardly a dozen have complied with the order, an official said. Many departments, which have opened their accounts, have not yet tweeted or responded to people’s queries.
“We have not compiled the twitter accounts of departments yet. The process is on,” Director Information Anuj Kumar Jha told PTI when asked about how many departments have come on Twitter.
With a view to making communication more effective, improving redressal of complaints and highlighting the work being done, all government departments in Uttar Pradesh were directed on June 7 to open Twitter accounts within a week.
The directive was given by Principal Secretary Information Awanish Kumar Awasthi during a two-day workshop held here for the purpose. “Through these Twitter accounts, grievances of the people can be resolved timely with coordination between departments,” Awasthi had said.
The move was initiated after Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath asked the information department to ensure that all departments join Twitter like the Central government. The state police Twitter handle @Uppolice, which has over 1,91,000 followers, is providing help in solving grievances of the people and is among the most popular in the state.
The state police had launched the Twitter-based grievance redressal service last year and have addressed lakhs of complaints since then. UP 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, state police officers claimed.
These initiatives were previously taken by the Centre mainly by key ministries like the External Affairs, Railways and Commerce. The whole process is based on Twitter’s customer relation management platform in which software complaints are forwarded to the districts concerned with a particular code that is generated for the complaint.
Adityanath, whose Twitter handle is @myogiadityanath, has 6,03,000 followers and through it, he highlights his daily achievements and engagements. Ministers in Yogi cabinet like Health minister Sidharth Nath Singh, Deputy CMs Keshav Prasad Maurya and Dinesh Sharma are active on Twitter but departments held by them have yet to become active on Twitter.