Website of Chief Minister’s special cell inaccessible

The visitors to the site either get an intimation that the site could not be reached or they are diverted to the snapshot of the page dated July 6, 2016, which suggests that it could have been inactive for close to a week now. When contacted, officials from the National Informatics Centre (NIC), which manages the Tamil Nadu government portal among the other national sites, maintained that the website (www. cmcell.tn.gov.in) was very much active and denied that they had received any complaints. 

But sources in the CM’s Special Cell admitted that server had been down for a while and added that representatives from the NIC had been troubleshooting to rectify the problem. They promised that the website would become active soon. However, the site remained inactive till DTNext made its last attempt. 

Cyber security experts didn’t rule out the possibility of the site having been hacked, though they couldn’t confirm it without more information. “It could also be because the administrators would have pulled the website down to update the details or for some other reasons considering it has remained inactive for so long. But we can only assume that,” said Prasanna, a cyber security expert. 

It may be recalled that hackers from Indonesia and Pakistan hacked several of websites belonging to Tamil Nadu and Kerala governments in 2012. Though public can register their grievances to the CM’s Special Cell by post, the website, launched in mid-2012, has served as one of the effective avenues of the public redressal system with a speedy response and a tracking facility to know the status of complaints filed online.