Rajnath baiter sacked- ministry restricted use of social media by paramilitary personnel

TT, New Delhi: A CRPF constable who had uploaded a video on Facebook criticising Union home minister Rajnath Singh over the Sukma massacre of personnel has been sacked.

Pankaj Kumar Mishra had also made several social media posts questioning the political leadership, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, over alleged poor service conditions and had demanded that jawans be treated the same way as officers. Mishra had also called for fixed working hours, weekly offs and same quality of food.

The constable had uploaded the posts after the killing of 25 paramilitary jawans in a Maoist ambush in April.

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"Mishra was dismissed from service because of his misconduct. An internal probe has found him guilty of serious violation of service rules," a senior CRPF official said.

Mishra, who was posted in Bengal's Durgapur when he had first uploaded a video criticising Rajnath, was transferred to Assam's Jorhat and a departmental inquiry initiated against him. Mishra's relative Abhay Kumar was among the 25 CRPF personnel who were killed in Chhattisgarh's Sukma.

Mishra, a resident of Bihar, is among several paramilitary force jawans who have taken to social media to express their grievances.

In January, BSF constable Tej Bahadur Yadav, who had uploaded video clips to complain that troops were served substandard food, was dismissed from service on the instructions of the Union home ministry for "an act prejudicial to good order and discipline".

Yadav had claimed in the videos that troops were served poor quality food and often went to bed on an empty stomach. He had accused higher-ups of selling off the food the government supplied for jawans.

Soon after Yadav's post, a CRPF constable had uploaded videos citing the disparity in pay, pension and food between the army and the paramilitary, leaving the Union home ministry bosses red-faced.

Following such back-to-back videos, the ministry had restricted the use of social media by paramilitary personnel and banned them from uploading personal photos and videos on Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and YouTube without permission from the directors-general of their respective forces.