Govt websites crash as rains lash capital

NEW DELHI: Indian government websites crashed on Thursday after heavy rains flooded the premises of National Informatics Centre, which hosts the servers of official portals.

All websites having the domain address of 'nic.in' were inaccessible since early Thursday, affecting official work and causing inconvenience to the general public.

Government sources said the NIC premises was flooded and water entered the area housing the UPS and diesel generator, necessitating disconnection of power supply to be cut off since morning to avoid any accident.

The engineers were still on the job to restore the area so that power supply could be resumed.

NIC is the official custodian of all the government and department as well as strategic locations and centres' websites.

Sources said they were taking precautions to avoid recurrence of such an incident.

Websites of the following offices were among scores that went out of reach -- President of India, Prime Minister's Office, Parliament of India, Supreme Court of India, Press Information Bureau and passport office.

The NIC is the homepage of the government's web services organisation.