Yogi government to set up ‘Social Media Monitoring Cell’

Virendra Singh Rawat

Lucknow / Nov 9, 2021

The Uttar Pradesh government will set up a specialised ‘Social Media Monitoring Centre’ as part of its general law and order control machinery.

According to UP additional chief secretary, home, Awanish Kumar Awasthi, the proposed Centre will be established in the state Intelligence department headquarters in Lucknow.

“On the directions of chief minister Yogi Adityanath, a slew of steps have been taken to fortify the law and order machinery and control crime,” he said in a statement here on Monday.

The new Centre will be equipped with advanced ‘news extractor’ and ‘database analytics’ software to monitor the social media outlets for possible breach of norms and culpable delinquency.

The Yogi Adityanath government has also approved the proposal to engage National Institute for Smart Government (NISG) as consultant and executing agency of the proposed Centre. NISG is a not-for-profit company incorporated in 2002 by the Centre and NASSCOM to support the digital and smart governance initiatives undertaken by the government departments and entities.

Moreover, the UP government has simultaneously been upgrading the cyber crime wing of the police to curb the growing incidents of online frauds and digital crimes, especially related to the financial and banking spectrum.