As Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ambitious Digital India campaign begins on Wednesday, it is haunted by a controversy over malicious changes made to a Wikipedia profile of former PM Jawaharlal Nehru from a Government of India Internet Protocol (IP) address.

In the provocative changes to Nehru's profile, it was stated that Nehru's grandfather Gangadhar Nehru was a Muslim called Ghiasuddin Ghazi, that he was born in a red-light district of Allahabad and vulgar details of his "relationship" with Edwina Mountbatten, wife of Lord Mountbatten, India's first Governor General, who signed on the declaration of India's independence.

The Congress on Wednesday was outraged. "Wikipedia pages of Jawaharlal Nehru and Motilal Nehru were altered. What is worse, it was done from a government IP and using NIC (National Informatics Centre) computers. Will PM Narendra Modi answer how were Wikipedia pages of a former Prime Minister and Congress leaders altered through a government IP?" Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said.

Though the edits were immediately removed by the empanelled editors of Wikipedia, the changes that were tried from an IP address provided by the state-controlled National Informatics Centre were also displayed on the Wikipedia page on Nehru .

The revelation about edits made to Nehru's Wiki profile were discovered by a software that tracks anonymous changes made to its entries and the discovery of the changes was announced by @AnonGoIWPEdits, Twitter handle of Pranesh Prakash, the man behind the software.

Prakash, who is also a policy director at the Centre for Internet and Society, also told The Times of India that it is highly unlikely that the NCI computers were hacked into to make the changes or the IP address was spoofed.