Pollution Board website ‘hacked’, plaint lodged

The official website of the Haryana State Pollution Control Board (HSPCB) has been reportedly hacked since Thursday evening. It has not been functional since then. The department has lodged a complaint with the cyber cell of the Haryana Police regarding hacking of its official site.

Taking serious note of it, Vineet Garg, Chairman, HSPCB, ordered the withdrawal of the IT cell charge from Kuldeep Singh, Senior Environment Engineer (SEE), and assigned it to Sanjeev Budhiraja, SEE, in addition to his present duties.

The Chairman also ordered Budhiraja to put up the IT Cell files to the Member Secretary directly. The order reads: “It is further directed that the in-charge of IT Cell will not make any additions, deletions or changes in the official sites without obtaining the prior approval from the competent authority i.e. Member Secretary/Chairman, HSPCB.”

The Chairman further directed Vanita Saini, Junior Software Developer, to work as admin of the sites till further order in place of Praveen Kaushik, IT Cell.

According to sources, the official site of the pollution board ‘hrocmms.nic.in’ stopped working on Thursday evening. The board officials suspect it to be a cyber attack. Almost 90 per cent work of the pollution board of the state is operational through this site.

All the consent to establish (CTE), consent to operate (CTO), no-objection certificates (NOC) and other permissions or refusals are maintained only through this site, sources said.

Pradeep Dagar, Member Secretary, HSPCB, said the National Information Centre (NIC) has also been informed about it.