Now, Khattar to interact with people on Twitter, Facebook

CHANDIGARH Use Twitter or the Facebook route if you want to have access to Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar to get your grievances resolved.

All you have to do is tag the CM’s official Twitter handle while airing the grievance or seeking help.

Khattar, an RSS pracharak-turned-chief minister, uses two twitter handles with a following of about 6.5 lakh.

Taking a cue from the effective use of social media by external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj and railway minister Suresh Prabhu, the spin-masters of the Khattar government have decided to put in place an integrated social media grievances tracker for Twitter and Facebook.

This tracker, the officials claim, will redress fast and in real-time the complaints pertaining to different departments that people will shoot through social media.

“A dedicated tech- savvy team will handle this project and function like a single-window system. Every grievance raised on the Twitter or on the Facebook accounts will be monitored till it is resolved. The reaction time of the field staff will be watched closely,” Dr Rakesh Gupta, additional principal secretary to CM, told Hindustan Times.

“The objective of putting in place this tracker is to provide a platform to the citizens to easily interact with the government.”

This online grievance redressal mechanism that will come into force on May 15 will identify, process and resolve all relevant short-term complaints being sent by the citizens to the chief minister’s office (CMO) or the state government through social media.

It will also be used to deal with the plethora of suggestions that the CMO receives through e-mails. A system has been devised to process such suggestions and to ensure proper follow-up by the departments concerned, Gupta, a 1997-batch IAS officer, said.

While other state governments are also using social media, officials claim that the Haryana government is poised to become the first state to use a technical platform to monitor all grievances received by the chief minister on his Twitter handle, Facebook and e-mail monitor and ensure quick redress of grievances.

The tracker cell at the CM secretariat will be operational under overall supervision of a statelevel nodal officer, while city magistrates will be nodal officers at the district level. All the nodal officers will have to create their own official ID in order to reach out to the citizens with real-time solutions. The technical and operational assistance will be provided by a private firm.

On Tuesday, a workshop was also held to train and sensitise key functionaries of the project such as officer on special duty (OSD) to CM Bhupeshwar Dayal, IT advisor to CM Dhruv Majumdar and nodal officers of various departments.

Later, a meeting of all city magistrates was also held where they were directed to use official e-mail accounts generated by National Informatics Centre for responding to the grievances on social media.

PEOPLE WILL HAVE TO TAG CM’S OFFICIAL TWITTER HANDLE WHILE AIRING THEIR GRIEVANCES OR SEEKING HELP