“Dont Try to Temper URL,” says Odisha Assembly website !

Reported by Sandeep Sarangi
Bhubaneswar, Mar 12:

“Caution: Dont Try to Temper URL” is the message that flashes on the screen when one uses the advance search function on Odisha Assembly’s website http://odishaassembly.nic.in.

As if the non-functional search engine wasn’t enough, there was this advisory prominently displayed using incorrect English!

When a user tries to use the search feature to find questions and answers for a particular date of the current session or previous session, the page redirects the surfer to a webpage ( http://odishaassembly.nic.in/error.htm ) that reads the following.

“OOOOOOPPPPPPSSSS  Page not found. Caution:   Dont Try to Temper URL. If you do so, this page will welcome you again and again.THink twice before tempering….:”Be a good visitor “:  .“

What it actually meant was “Oops! Page not found. Caution: Don’t tamper the URL.”

In case the techies who look after the website have run out of ideas and what to say when, here are a few suggestions: Page not found warning is used when a particular page the user is looking for is not available. URL tampering has to do with hacking. It is unfair to link it to the search feature of the website directly.

Also, a simple word processor would guide the visitor about usage of space and period. Similarly, a little Google search will give one enough ideas about writing a decent advisory.

Although the website does update the questions submitted by MLAs, it curiously forgets to update the answers received from different departments.

A case in point: while the website lists MLA Tara Prasad Bahinipati’s question to School and Mass Education Department on July 10, 2014 regarding use of Odia as a subject in English Medium schools of the state has been mentioned.

However, the answer to the questions says, “Data still being collected.”  In most other cases, the answer section reads “Online answer not received from Department,” even for questions asked a year and more back.

It is high time the state government, which never tires of trumpeting its IT savvy credentials, put its own house in order.