Congress negotiated with cyber squatter: BJP
India?s principal opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Tuesday came down heavily on the Congress over the cyber domain issue, with the former alleging that its rival negotiated with a cyber squatter to ?malign? the party.
A cyber war has broken out between the BJP and the Congress with the former serving a legal notice to their main rival political party after it was found out that the site www.bjp.com diverts the traffic to the official site of All India Congress Committee (AICC).
?The BJP suspects that the Congress Party has covertly negotiated with a cyber squatter and used his site bjp.com to first spread malicious content affecting the BJP. In the recent past they have used this squatter?s site (bjp.com) to redirect it to the AICC. The identity of the owner of this site has been kept masked all the while. These are not steps taken unknowingly,? said BJP National Spokesperson. Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday.
?There are evidences that this cyber squatter has attempted to sell of his site. The Congress Party may have bought or leased or may have even taken over this site from the squatter. We allege that this was done to malign the BJP.?
Sitharaman said the BJP is keeping a ?keen watch? on the developments.
If the site revives to link with the AICC as before we shall further pursue all the legal options available. In the meanwhile, we expect the Congress Party to respond to the legal notice on a matter which relates to cyber crime,? she said.
The BJP said it had sent a legal notice to the Congress Party dated Sept 25 and ?the same was delivered to the Congress on Sept 27 through by Speed Post?.
?Instead of giving a studied response to the legal notice the Congress is misleading the public by making off-the-cuff remarks which are contemptuous in tone and tenor,? said the BJP spokesperson.
?We suspect this is being done for 2 reasons: first, they want to cover up their misdeeds and confuse people and second, they do not believe in facing the facts and mending their ways. Instead, they prefer to carelessly disregard the allegations without understanding the seriousness of the developments,? she said.
The cyber war surfaced on Oct 3, when anyone who types www.bjp.com and within seconds, was taken to the http://www.congress.org.in featuring prominently the troika of Congress leadership- Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
The Congress said it was not looking for the help of BJP to bring traffic to their site and party and the onus is on BJP to look into the matter, but the BJP said the domain name has been hijacked to take the viewers to the site of Congress.
The official site of BJP is www.bjp.org.
