Litigants,lawyers face problems as NGT website remains blocked

The hacked website of National Green Tribunal remained unaccessible for the second consecutive day today after it was blocked by National Informatics Centre, with officials hoping that it would become operational in another couple of days.
"This site can't be reached," said a message posted on the green panel's website.
NGT officials said the NIC was working on the site, which came under cyber attack with a group posting profanities, and it was likely to be restored soon.
"We have already complained to National Informatics Centre and the site is blocked as of now. We are in touch with them and hopefully the website would be restored in a day or two," said an NGT official on condition of anonymity.

The NGT officials said they were providing the causelists of cases to the NGT Bar Association who are in turn circulating it to others.
A case has already been registered in the cyber cell at the Tilak Marg police station in this regard.

Litigants and lawyers, who accessed the website for a list of hearings scheduled were having a tough time as they could not access important contents like daily orders or judgements.
Advocate Balendu Shekhar, who represents East Delhi Municipal Corporation in the green panel, said the NGT's orders used to get uploaded daily by the evening but after the hacking episode, the site has been down for two days now.

"The biggest issue is of compliance of the NGT order. Non-availabilty of the judicial order leads to delay in implementation of the order. So there is always a threat of contempt looming large," he said.
Another lawyer Gautam Singh said the NGT website was quite useful as it gave out the composition of bench, list of cases, daily orders, judgements or any latest announcements. "There is now a delay in execution of orders as we have to ask for the orders which were earlier available online," he said.
Amul Mani Tripathi, a litigant, blamed the NGT officials for the problem and said he has filed a case but was totally unaware about when it would be listed for hearing.

The NGT website was hacked on October 3 evening by a group claiming it was an act of "revenge" against Indian army's surgical strikes across the Line of Control.