Social media posts on the platform X (formerly Twitter) claiming a website called 'congressitcell.com' registered in Sichuan, China is run by the Indian National Congress party, are false.
Although the website was originally created by a Congress worker from Gujarat in October 2017, the domain name expired in 2018 after the website owner did not renew it.
The domain has subsequently been bought by unknown users whose details are not publicly available. In fact, the website also ran a fake poll targetting the Congress party until recently.
Domain names are not permanent and have to be renewed from time to time by paying a renewal fee. If the domain name is not renewed in time, it is put up for auction after the grace period expires, where it can be bought by someone else.
Several right-wing users and Bharatiya Janata Party supporters on Friday posted screenshots of the registration details of the site which shows the registrant contact as someone in Sichuan, China.
Mr Sinha, an account who has peddled disinformation several times in the past, reiterated the false claim that the Congress party is allowing someone in Sichuan, China to run their official site.
Babulal Marandi, BJP leader and former Chief Minister of Jharkhand and current state president also shared the same false claim.
FACT CHECK
BOOM found that the claim is false. The website was originally created by a Congress worker in 2017 but the domain name (congressitcell.com) subsequently lapsed in 2018 and changed ownership several times since then according to Whois records.
We visited the website congressitcell.com and found that it showed a blank home page with only a title showing Chinese text, at the time of writing this article. Using Google Lens we translated the Chinese text to 'Goluo Shitu Beauty, Hair and Makeup School'. The website currently has no mention of India, Congress, or any party leader including Rahul Gandhi.
We then analysed the viral screenshot being shared and saw that it shows domain name details for CongressITCell as seen on whois.com a website hosting service where one can look up registration details of any website. On the site, under the Registrant Contact, the email id shows "CongressITcell@namebrightprivacy.com"
NameBright is a domain registration company. NameBrightPrivacy allows users to hide the name and contact information of the owner of a domain name at a fee.
Wayback Machine Archives
Using Wayback Machine we looked for archives of congressitcell.com and found it was first archived in 2018. This date doesn't necessarily mean the website creation date but only the date on which a snapshot of the website was captured by Wayback Machine.
Below is a screenshot of how the website CongressITCell.com looked on August 6, 2018.
The top left-hand corner of the site shows the Congress party logo along with a phone number and an email id of one 'Mayurkhokhar007@gmail.com'.
At the bottom are four icons and dummy text of 'lorem ipsum...' used by designers to show how text will appear on the site.
Congress Worker Confirms He Created Website In 2017 But Domain Name Expired In 2018
We then ran a search for Mayur Khokhar the name mentioned in the email id and found his LinkedIn page which said he is the Managing Director of Devweb an IT company.
A further search for Khokhar and Devweb led us to his Facebook page where he states that he is part of the National Students Union India (NSUI), the youth wing of the Congress.
Speaking to BOOM, Khokhar said that while he had started the CongressITCell page he no longer operates it. "I started that page in October 2017. We were going to use it to propagate the Congress ideology and put up news about the party's achievements and activities. But somehow it remained stagnant and we never went ahead with it," Khokhar said. He also added that the certification of the site lapsed in 2018. "We forgot to renew the certification and then we lost ownership of the site. We do not know who owns it anymore."
To verify this, we looked for further archives of the site and found other archives for the years 2021, 2022 and 2023.
Archives Show The Site Ran A Poll Targetting The Congress Party
In 2021, the first archive for the site is from May 20, 2021 and it shows a poll being run for 'Who is the real Congress IT Cell?' which options of news outlets The Caravan, The Quint, Alt News, The Print and The Wire. The site also carries a disclaimer at the end that states, 'This website has been launched to gather public opinion about certain Indian publications. The website is not officially associated with any of these publications or with the Congress party. The sole objective of this website is to gather public comments and feedback.'
The name Mayur Khokhar and the Congress party symbol which were visible in the 2018 archive of the site are not visible in the 2021 archive.
All the archives for 2021 and for the year 2022 for the website CongressITCell on WaybackMachine show the same poll appearing on the site with no other information about who operates it.
The news outlets mentioned in the poll are those routinely criticised by BJP supporters for being critical of the party. Additionally, we also found a tweet by a Alt news fact checker which listed tweets by right wing users including Shefali Vaidya and Ajit Datta, sharing the same poll in 2021.
We further found that there were three archives for the site from 2023 - one in February and two in March. While the February 9 and March 11 showed the same poll; the one on March 21 showed a blank page with the logo of 'NameCheap' and a line 'This domain was recently registered at Namecheap.com. Please check back later!'
A search for 'namecheap' showed that it is a domain name registration and web hosting company based in Arizona, USA.
WhoIs History Of The Site In 2023
We then searched for congressitcell.com on Whoxy, a website that allows users to find the whois history of a website. The site has four records of who owned the name congressitcell.com starting from March 1, 2023 till September 15, 2023. In 2023 till May 2023 the registrant country was listed as Iceland which then changed to Singapore, in June 6, 2023 and as of September 15, 2023 it showed the registrant country as China.
According to Whoxy, the website congressitcell.com was registered with a site called Dropcatch.com on June 4, 2023, updated on June 7, 2023 and expires on June 4, 2024.
We looked up DropCatch and found that it is a site that helps users identify and buy expiring domain names. In its About Us and How It Works section, the site says, "Every day 60,000 - 85,000 .com and .net domain names become available on the 'Daily Drop'. Each domain drops when the previous owner does not pay the annual renewal fee for the domain name.'
Mayur Khokhar who first created the website congressitcell.com in 2017 said, "I created the site and registered the name on October 26, 2017. I did this on my own and the Congress party was not involved in this. I believe in the Congress ideology and I used the site to put up some articles praising Congress and also added a Congress logo. I also created blog pages for each state's Congress wing for the same. But after that I forgot about the same and it expired in 2018. In 2018, I got an email saying domain name is expiring but I was cash-strapped then so could not renew it. After that I thought I will see if it is still available to see if I can put up some NSUI content but it was already gone by then"
BOOM was able to ascertain that while a member of the Congress youth wing NSUI did start the website CongressITCell, it has since changed ownership several times. We are unable to independently identify the current owner of the website but can confirm it is not run by the same person, Khokhar, who first created the site.