BJP website was hacked for few minutes: IT Minister

New Delhi: IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said here on Tuesday the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) website was hacked for a few minutes last week, even as the site has remained under the "maintenance" mode for more than a week now.

"There are rogue elements in the society. The site was hacked only for a few minutes. We got back control very soon," Prasad said in the first admission from the government about the BJP site being hacked, at the "Digital India Summit" here.

The minister, however, did not say when the site was expected to be functional again.

The message on the BJP website still reads: "We'll be back soon! Sorry for the inconvenience but we're performing some maintenance at the moment. We will be back online shortly!"

The BJP IT cell head Amit Malviya last week said the site was not hacked. While admitting that the site had experienced some sort of "transgression", Malviya said the site was down due to a "technical glitch", not hacking.

Speaking on the sidelines of a panel discussion at the Digital India Summit, Malviya said the BJP website would be functional soon.

Dismissing the allegations of peddling fake news on social media, Malviya said such accusations keep arising as the BJP dominates the social media space among the political parties in India.

"The BJP is the only party in India, which has social media guidelines for its cadres," Malviya claimed.