Puducherry Lieutenant Governor Kiran Bedi on Thursday cancelled a notification issued by the chief minister of the Union Territory imposing a ban on the use of social media by government employees for official work. Bedi on Wednesday issued another notice, in which she said that the earlier circular was in contravention of guidelines, rules and policies. She declared the Chief Minister V Narayanasamy’s directive, dated December 2, null and void.

Narayanasamy had said that the server of the social media companies were located abroad, thus making the official communication and documents shared on them accessible to anyone. He further pointed out that this was in violation of the Official Secrets Act and guidelines issued by the Centre and the Ministry of Information Technology. The notice also said that an official must take written permission from the chief secretary before doing government work through social media.

The chief minister had said government officials “must not use social media for interaction with seniors bypassing the administrative hierarchy and routine official channel”. This comes only days after Bedi suspended a Civil Service cadre for posting a pornographic video on a WhatsApp group that Bedi and several senior administrative officials of Puducherry are part of. Bedi suspended him soon after. Bedi had started several WhatsApp groups for office work a few months ago. At the time, Narayanasamy had put forward his reservations against the move, reported The Hindu.

Bedi’s step against the official did not go down well with his colleagues, who said she should have followed official procedure against Sivakumar, who holds the Joint Secretary rank, before taking a decision on his suspension.

Bedi was sworn in as Lieutenant Governor of Puducherry in May and was initially praised for her work. However, a cold war soon began between bureaucrats and Bedi, and later between the Congress-led government and Bedi, with the government accusing her of being heavy-handed.

This is not the first time of a Lieutenant Governor has had differences with the government in a non-Bharatiya Janata Party Union Territory. Former Delhi L-G Najeeb Jung resigned from his post in December after having several differences with the Arvind Kejriwal government, though he said he was resigning to get back to academics.