Mahima
The Bombay High Court issued notice to Bank of Maharashtra (BoM) seeking response to a petition challenging its guidelines for regulation of social media by its existing and retired employees.
The bench of Justices KK Tated and Riyaz Chagla issued the notice while hearing the petition by All-India Bank of Maharashtra Employees’ Federation.
The petition sought quashing and setting aside of guidelines passed previous year under the title ‘Social Media Policy’.
The petitioners contended, “It will have far-reaching restrictions on freedom of speech of government employees.”
BoM is an important public sector bank with 15 million customers, around 1900 branches and 88% shares being held by the central government.
The petition explained that the bank issued guidelines regarding usage of social media by customers, stakeholders and general public.
The policy includes all forms of social media, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Wikipedia and applies on all kinds of staff comments, retweets, posts and messages on boards and forums.
The policy mandates that an employee must acquire permission before developing a site or write a blog or make comments which mentions the name of the bank or its policies.
The guidelines prohibit employees form posting such remarks or views on social media which may be defamatory to the bank or fellow employees or criticizes the management or business policies or strategies.
The guidelines also issue a warning, “The internet is not anonymous, nor does it forget. Everything written on the web can be traced back to the author one way or another very easily”.