By IANS,
New Delhi: Sharpening its attack on the Congress over alleged theft of its online identity, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Tuesday said the ruling party was misleading people over the legal notice sent to it and was making contemptuous remarks.
Rejecting the Congress contention that it had not received a legal notice, BJP spokesperson Nirmala Sitharaman alleged that the party was trying to “cover up its misdeeds.”
She said the BJP suspected that Congress had “covertly negotiated with a cyber squatter and used its website www.bjp.com to first spread malicious content” affecting the party and had in the recent past “used the squatter’s site to redirect it to AICC (All India Congress Committee)”.
She said the BJP had sent a legal notice to the Congress on Sep 25 which was delivered at the Congress office Sep 27 through 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,” Sitharaman said in a statement.
Sitharaman said the BJP suspected the Congress was denying that it had received the notice to confuse people.
“We suspect this is being done for two 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.
Pointing to Congress contention that it had not received the notice, she said if that was the case then the party should refrain from irresponsibly commenting on the matter.
She said some media channels had captured the site www.bjp.com being linked to the AICC site and added that the website went out of access soon after media was informed of the legal notice.
“Subsequently, the two US based telephone numbers changed the recorded message of their answering machine. The access to bjp.com was restored back again late last night (Monday) and most importantly the direct link to the AICC was cut off,” she said.
“There are evidences that this cyber squatter has attempted to sell off his site. The Congress 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,” she said.
The spokesperson said BJP was keeping a watch on the developments and if the site revives to link with AICC, the party will pursue all the legal options available.
The Congress had Monday termed the BJP’s allegation about theft of its online identity as “juvenile and bankrupt” and denied having received any notice from the opposition party.
Party spokesperson Jayanthi Natarajan had termed the allegation as “a publicity stunt” and said the Congress will respond suitably if it gets the notice.
She said if the BJP had any issues about its identity, it should make a complaint to cyber crime unit.
Sitharaman had gone on record Sunday about BJP having sent a legal notice to the Congress over “petty theft” of its online identity.
Sitharaman said the party had sought to find ownership details on the relevant search engines. The details were provided as Bharat Journals and Publications and two US telephone numbers were mentioned.
She said “ownership of bjp.com was masked.”