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ISLAMABAD: The car\u00ade\u00adtaker government suspended mobile phone and data services nationwide on Thursday for election day, despite Pakistan Tele\u00adco\u00admmunication Auth\u00ado\u00adrity\u2019s earlier assurances of uninterrupted internet access.<\/p>\n
Services had still not been restored in vast swathes of the country at the time of going to print.<\/p>\n
However, landline internet and social media websites did not face disruptions.<\/p>\n
The interior ministry said in a statement that \u201cprecious lives have been lost\u201d in recent militant attacks and such \u201csecurity measures are essential to maintain the law and order situation and to deal with potential threats\u201d.<\/p>\n
This decision to block mo\u00adb\u00adile and internet services not only disrupted citizens\u2019 daily lives but also cast a shadow over the electoral process, with many voters unable to reach or even locate their polling stations.<\/p>\n
Voters rely on a text messaging service of the Election Commission to confirm the polling station where they are registered to vote. The unavailability of ride-hailing apps also kept many voters from moving to and from polling stations.<\/p>\n
Questions also arose regarding the ability of presiding officers to transmit polling station results via the controversial Election Management System (EMS), given the communication blackout.<\/p>\n
However, Chief Election Commissioner Sikandar Sultan Raja downplayed the controversy, suggesting that presiding officers could physically deliver Form-45 and other essential documents to the returning officers\u2019 office. These documents could then be uploaded to the EMS and would automatically be forwarded once the internet services were restored, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to clarify that our operations are not reliant on the internet,\u201d Mr Raja said, according to Dawn.com<\/em>.<\/p>\n NetBlocks, a global internet watchdog, said data confirmed there was a disruption to mobile phone and internet services \u201ccorroborating widespread user reports of outages\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThe ongoing election day internet blackout in Pakistan is amongst the largest we\u2019ve observed in any country in terms of severity and extent,\u201d NetBlocks director Alp Toker told AFP<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u201cThe practice is inherently undemocratic and is known to limit the work of independent election observers and cause irregularities in the voting process.\u201d<\/p>\n Mobile and data services, which were suspended shortly after the start of polling, remained unavailable until late in the night.<\/p>\n A little after 8pm, the interior ministry said on X, formerly Twitter, that mobile phone services \u201care being gradually restored in different parts of the country\u201d, including in Bhakkar, Sargodha, Taxila, Gujar Khan Chakri, Loralai, Sibi, Jhal Magsi and all of Sindh, except Karachi, where network signals started to appear on mobile screens a little after midnight.<\/p>\n At least two news websites \u2014 that of Geo News<\/em> and Samaa<\/em> \u2014 were unavailable for several hours in the night, showing \u201cError 503 Backend Fetch Failed\u201d and \u201cError 404\u201d messages, respectively.<\/p>\n \u2018Brazen assault on democracy\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari was the first to raise the alarm over the matter. \u201cThe mobile services should immediately be restored across the country. Have asked my party to approach both ECP and courts for the purpose,\u201d he tweeted.<\/p>\n Later, speaking to the media in Larkana, he said that the suspension of mobile services would impact voter turnout along with the security of the people if \u201cincidents of violence were to happen\u201d.<\/p>\n PTI\u2019s election correspondence cell in Sindh urged the ECP to restore internet services across the country, saying that it was a \u201cbrazen assault on democracy\u201d.<\/p>\n In a letter to CEC Raja, PTI\u2019s election cell head Barrister Ali Tahir said the internet shutdown raised \u201cserious doubts about the ECP\u2019s commitment to fulfilling its constitutional duties\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThe pretexts provided by the Pakistan Telecommunication Auth\u00adority (PTA) for these internet blackouts are both flimsy and inadequate,\u201d he asserted.<\/p>\n PTI leader Hammad Azhar also questioned the failure to restore phone networks. \u201cWhich security situation is in danger now?\u201d he asked in a social media post.<\/p>\n Jamaat-i-Islami leader Hafiz Naeemur Rehman expressed serious concerns about communication disruptions due to the shutdown of mobile services and accused the government of paralysing the communication system on the day of the election.<\/p>\n