At the National Informatics Centre (NIC), which hosts the servers of the dozen or more portals, water seeped into generator sets and equipment, prompting the closures of sites having the domain address of "nic.in".

"The system was on the blink for a long period but now slowly we are coming back on," said a senior systems operator from the NIC, which provides network support to federal, state and local governments.

Websites of the Indian president, prime minister, parliament, supreme court, military, passport offices and other official bodies remained on the blink after the heavy rains that drenched New Delhi.