NEW DELHI: After the reverses it has suffered, including the loss in last year's national election, BJP is now — almost literally — facing an 'identity theft', allegedly at the hands of the Congress.
And the clash in the virtual world promises to be fierce. On Sunday, the party announced it had served a legal notice to Congress, accusing it of "petty, pickpocketlike theft" of its online identity.
The notice, served on September 27, accuses Congress of clandestinely creating a web portal in the name www.bjp.com which, it claimed,
was diverting users to the Congress website. The address of the official BJP website is www.bjp.org .
BJP spokesperson Nirmala Sitaraman said the ruling party had not responded to the notice. The Congress, however, dismissed it as "politicizing" of a "technological problem".
The cyber ambush was noticed when BJP managers noted a sharp fall in online hits at its official website even after the Ayodhya verdict. A check revealed the existence of www.bjp.com, which was directing puzzled users to the AICC site.
"The BJP sent a legal notice to the Congress on a matter of petty theft… a theft so low… of its political rival's identity. A pickpocket-like theft… but the ruling party has not yet responded to it officially," Sitaraman said.
The theft might not be more than an irritant but it seems to have got under the skin of BJP which sees itself as cyber savvy and looks for support on the internet. "Political parties register in dot org format and it is commercial establishments which have dot com websites. But some time back, bjp.com was created by somebody… we do not know who," Sitaraman said.
Party leaders said as the website was "masked" and linked itself to the Congress website, it was important to know who was behind it, hence the legal notice.