ISLAMABAD (ABC): The PTI on Friday alleged that its websites were “blocked” in Pakistan and demanded an answer from the federal authorities.
The PTI, deprived of its iconic ‘bat’ symbol for the upcoming polls, has fielded its leaders as independent candidates with different electoral symbols.
To combat confusion among voters and to ease access to election-related information, the party launched an online portal on its website insaf.pk, as well as a “back-up site”, pticandidates.com.
It also introduced a feature whereby voters can message on Imran Khan’s official Facebook account to get information about PTI-backed candidates.
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.
“Can you explain why PTI’s websites are blocked in Pakistan?” the party asked in the post.
“People are still getting symbol information from Imran Khan’s Facebook page so the question is what purpose is this block serving?” it asked.
Jibran Ilyas, a member of the PTI’s social media team, also tagged Saif in his post, asking, “Can you tell Pakistanis why the websites of [the] country’s most popular political party [are] blocked by you?”
The issue comes after a fake web portal — mimicking one launched by the party to provide information on PTI-backed candidates — emerged and was found to be providing incorrect information to voters.
It should also be noted that in recent weeks, multiple countrywide internet outages have been witnessed that coincided with the party’s online events. In the most recent occurrence on January 20, internet services were interrupted an hour before the PTI’s “virtual power show”.