On Friday, PTI claimed that its websites were “blocked” in Pakistan and demanded an explanation from the federal authorities.
On Friday, the PTI, facing the absence of its iconic ‘bat’ symbol for the upcoming polls, fielded its leaders as independent candidates with different electoral symbols.
To address potential confusion among voters and facilitate access to election-related information, the party launched an online portal on its website insaf.pk, along with a “back-up site,” pticandidates.com.
The party also introduced a feature allowing voters to message Imran Khan’s official Facebook account to obtain information about PTI-backed candidates.
Dawn.com staff attempted to access the PTI’s websites on Friday but were unsuccessful without using a Virtual Private Network (VPN) through Wi-Fi or mobile data.
The party’s official X account tagged the official handles of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), interim information minister Murtaza Solangi, and interim IT minister Umar Saif.
The party questioned the purpose of the block, especially when voters could still obtain symbol information from Imran Khan’s Facebook page. Jibran Ilyas, a member of the PTI’s social media team, directly addressed the interim IT minister, Umar Saif, asking for an explanation on why the websites of the country’s most popular political party were allegedly blocked.
The issue arose after a fake web portal, which imitated the one launched by the PTI to offer information on PTI-backed candidates, surfaced. This fraudulent portal was discovered to be providing inaccurate information to voters.
It’s noteworthy that over the past few weeks, there have been several countrywide internet outages that coincided with the PTI’s online events. The most recent incident occurred on January 20, where internet services were interrupted an hour before the PTI’s “virtual power show.”
Before the recent incident on January 20, similar disruptions in internet services were reported on December 17 and January 7, prompting the PTI to urge the Supreme Court to take notice of the internet suspension.
The interim government attributed these disruptions to “technical” issues and system installations. Information Minister Solangi mentioned earlier this week that there was “no guarantee” such incidents would not happen in the future.
PTA Director General Ahmed Shamim Pirzada, in the same press conference, attributed the outages to “technical glitches” and ongoing system upgrades, warning that such issues might persist for the next two to three months.