THRISSUR: 'www.secularmarriage.com', the matrimony site launched by the Democratic Youth Federation of India(DYFI) State Committee nearly two years ago to promote secular marriages, could well make a comeback anytime soon, said DYFI secretary, M Swaraj, MLA.
“We will relaunch the website soon with another name. Currently, we are working on it. The website was down before the recent Assembly elections. We will launch a renovated website which is more technically advanced. The renovated site will be handled by a new team,” he said.
And Swaraj added that the website was meant to convey a message to society. “Now people choose partners from their own community. So we started the website to enable persons, who wanted to marry without factoring in religion, caste and creed. It is a platform for secular marriages,” he said, adding," We hope, the site can perform a significant role in helping those, who want to find their partners irrespective of caste, creed and religion".
Pointing out the website's USP, Swaraj said unlike the other matrimonial websites, there was no space to denote the caste/religion of the bride or the groom on secularmarriage.com.
Interested youth, who want to tie the knot in a secular way, can register their names on the site and search for their partners there. And they can proceed with the alliance after making suitable enquiries about the background of the registered members, he said.
According to Swaraj, "We have no data on the marriages conducted through the site. We did not collect the data because survey of marriages conducted through the secular marriage platform was not on our agenda. We did not collect commission from persons, who registered on our website, like the other matrimonial websites".
Earlier, celebrity couple--director Ashiq Abu and actress Rima Kallingal-- had launched the website in Kochi on 17th December, 2014. But the site was hacked by an organisation named 'Islamic Army', barely a day after its launch. Despite this, the site was back online and worked for several months.
Now, though, one year and eight months on since the website's launch, its domain name is up for sale. And it can be bought by just about anyone, provided that they pay $1,888 which would come to around `1.25 lakh.
According to www.who.is, which provides details of the domain registration, www.secularmarriage.com is now owned by www.buydomains.com, a US-based organisation registered in Massachusetts, which has listed the matrimony site for sale.
Furthermore, www.who.is showed that the domain name was first registered by DYFI on 14th March, 2014 and for two years the domain name was owned by DYFI. And it cost the DYFI just under `1,000 to renew the registration annually. Even though the outfit was to have got the registration renewed in March 2016, it was not renewed by the technical team entrusted with the task. Hence, the domain name expired.
Usually, if the domain owner does not renew the registration the website will automatically shut down. Normally, the domain name owner gets one month extra time to renew the name.
The technical team did not reclaim the domain name. So in 20-4-2016 the new registrant registered the secularmarriage.com in their name and put it for sale.