CONGRESS SLAMS ‘GUTTER-LEVEL’ NEHRU WIKIPEDIA EDIT
A Twitter account called @AnonGoIWPEdits has claimed that someone from a government of India IP address made malicious revisions to Jawaharlal Nehru’s Wikipedia page, drawing strong reactions from the Congress.
The revisions claimed that Nehru’s grandfather, Gangadhar Nehru, was a Muslim, and also alleged that Nehru was born in a red-light area in Allahabad. The revisions were changed back to the original text in minutes, but the complete list of edits can be viewed on Wikipedia’s revision history page.
The Congress termed the move as “another aspect of this government and the BJP’s agenda to polarise people.” “This is a gutterlevel tactic,” said Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi. “We want to know how many dead or living leaders’ religious backgrounds this government tried to change?” he demanded to know.
According to a report, similar edits were also made to Wikipedia pages for Nehru’s father, Motilal Nehru. The Congress demanded that the government should reveal if it had lodged an FIR against the perpetrators and claimed it had traced the IP address responsible for the edits. “It shows that the computer belonged to NIC. Can any government agency do such things without directions from the top level?” the party asked.
When HT verified the IP address that made these changes on whois.domaintools.com, it was found that the IP address belongs to the government-owned National Informatics Centre (NIC).
Pranesh Prakash, policy director at the Centre for Internet and Society, in a report, said: “It isn’t clear as to who all have access to the NIC network, so it’s difficult to pinpoint the exact person who did this,” he said. Prakash is also the person responsible for creating the @AnonGOIWPEdits Twitter account. Meanwhile, Ram Sewak Sharma, Secretary, Department of Electronics and IT, told HT, “I was busy in the Digital India week function. I will look into the issue and take immediate action.”