The State government machinery has been on an overdrive to bring down photographs of Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy, host of Ministers and other politicians in nearly 300 official websites of various departments after the model code of conduct for the Lok Sabha elections came into force on March 10.

Sources said the Chief Minister’s office took the initiative following which the entire website — cmkarnataka.gov.in — was brought down on Tuesday citing the prevailing model code of conduct.

Circular

The work has been completed in most of the websites, government sources said, and added that the e-governance Department has sent a circular to each department asking them to remove the photographs and any political content in the websites. Sources also pointed out that Chief Secretary T.M. Vijaybhaskar also stressed the need to comply with the model code of conduct strictly, during his meeting of top government officials on Tuesday.

Nearly 200 of the about 250 official websites of various departments, boards and corporations, among others, are managed either by the e-governance Department or the National Informatics Centre. The rest are independently managed by departments or boards and corporations. “The model code of conduct has been complied with respect to those managed by the e-governance Department or the NIC. We have told the departments that maintain their own websites to comply with it.”