CHENNAI: The TVK government has renamed the Tamil Nadu Fact Check Unit as the Information Integrity Desk (IID) and put TVK’s social media head Guru, popularly known as Guru Thalaiva, founder of the Online Thalapathy Fans Club, in charge, official sources said.
Separately, TVK IT wing coordinator Dhivya has been appointed special officer of the social media desk under the Directorate of Information and Public Relations (DIPR).
The IID’s mandate, according to sources, remains largely unchanged from its previous form which is identifying misinformation and manipulated content, verifying claims against official sources, publishing evidence-based fact checks, and containing panic before it spreads. Guru heads the unit with Prasanna as the IID lead and Sujitha as the public relations officer.
For anyone submitting a claim to be checked, the process runs on a Ticket-Based Tracking System where every request gets a unique ticket ID that follows it from the moment it’s received to the moment a fact check is published, logging the source of the claim, the fact-checker assigned, the department involved, the nodal officer contacted, and the department’s response to it.
“The mechanism has been introduced to ensure accountability, transparency, traceability and complete auditability,” sources said.
High-priority claims are to be addressed within an hour, medium-priority within three hours, and low-priority within seven, with departments instructed to respond even outside office hours, since misinformation doesn’t “wait for business hours”, sources said. Each department has nominated a single nodal officer to liaise with the IID, and a dedicated WhatsApp group connects IID officials with them.
Alongside the IID, DIPR has also set up a separate social media desk, having a six-tier hierarchy running from the DIPR director and joint director (social media) down through a public relations officer, special officer, senior programme coordinators and writers, to technical assistants and graphic designers.
Dhivya is placed at the fourth tier as special officer and will also serve as the point of contact for quality clearance before content is despatched.
The previous DMK government set up theTamil Nadu Fact Check Unit on October 6, 2023, naming Iyan Karthikeyan, former editor-in-chief of fact-check platform YouTurn.in, as mission director. Minister C T R Nirmal Kumar, then with the AIADMK, had challenged both the unit’s constitution and Karthikeyan’s appointment in the Madras High Court. He withdrew the case subsequently.
