The Congress website aicc.org.in went offline for a while in the late afternoon sparking rumours that it was hacked.

The news of the hacking of the party website sent the Congress office staff, particularly those of AICC's computer department, into a tizzy in the afternoon, who later denied that any such thing indeed took place.

Media reports had it that a group Anonymous hacked the website of AICC as well as that of the Supreme Court protesting the government's proposal for stringent regulation of internet content.

The hacking was reportedly in response to the blocking of Torrent site thepiratebay.com and vimeo.com, the report said.

The Computer Department of AICC, however, denied hacking and said the server of the party website was not opening for sometime owing to a huge number of hits that followed the reports of its hacking.

"The site is not hacked at all. It was not opening for sometime because the load on the particular server was too heavy due to huge number of hits after the news of website hacking spread. It went slow at that time due to over- traffic," Chairman of AICC'c Computer Department Vishwajeet Singh, a former Rajya Sabha MP told PTI.

The issue of internet regulation was debated in the Rajya Sabha with a number of members opposing the new rules framed by the government forcing Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal to say the government would strive to build a consensus on the subject.

In December last year also, hackers had broken into the Congress website and defaced the profile page of party president Sonia Gandhi.

The attack had at that time coincided with Gandhi's 65th birthday and came just days after Indian government pledged a crackdown on "unacceptable" internet content.