On New Year’s Day, when Kerala was talking about the large Women’s Wall formed across the state, the Kerala Police quietly recorded one million likes on their Facebook page. That too at a time when supporters of Sabarimala traditions and the right wing were cross at the police over helping women enter the Sabarimala Temple previously banned to them.
With one million likes – now one million and seven thousand – the Kerala Police page has overtaken even the New York Police page (790K likes), says a release they have put out. The page had already come on top of the police departments in the country, to have the most number of followers, some time ago.
The official announcement of reaching the one million mark would be made on January 10, when the notice would be handed over to the Chief Minister, Pinarayi Vijayan, by Facebook India (Trust & Safety) head Satya Yadav. The CM would honour the policemen who worked behind the success of the Facebook page.
TNM had interviewed the team behind the FB page, in which they spoke about using humour as a way to connect to the people. Memes and trolls were all over the Facebook page, attracting young users, while the seriousness and dedication of the messages caught the attention of older people. Most comments would be answered, usually in the same lighter vein, while the team took care to not give offence.
The men behind the page are Senior Civil Police Officers Kamal Nath and Bimal VS, Civil Police Officers Santhosh PS, Arun BT and Biju BS. When they took charge about eight months ago, the Facebook page had nearly 3 lakh likes, and a post at best got 100 views. On realising that using formal language to communicate to people did not really work, they changed their tone a little, on the advise of IG Manoj Abraham. The page was started to convey to the people the police’s instructions and warnings, awareness on traffic and cyber related issues, and legal matters.