'X' remains blocked in Pakistan for fourth consecutive day

Amidst the allegations of poll tampering in Pakistan, X users have been facing a disruption in accessibility to a microblogging site for the fourth consecutive day.

In a post on X, NetBlocks, an organization that monitors internet accessibility, said, “Metric indicate that X/Twitter remains restricted for many users in Pakistan past the 72-hour mark.”

The interruptions in access to X appeared on February 17 around 10:00pm. The service was reportedly restored partially in some areas of the country but suspended again.

The recent outage was reported after former Commissioner Rawalpindi Liaquat Ali Chattha claimed that the rigging took place under his supervision during the February 8 election.

However, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) and the caretaker government have not issued any explanation regarding the issue till the filing of this news.

Pakistan had been experiencing a repeated social media outage before the elections when jailed Imran Khan's PTI had decided to organise an online gathering in January.

Following that the country re-entered accessibility problems on February 8, at the polling day, when the government had shut down the internet services to maintain the law and order situation across the country.

However, the netizens attributed the current outage to the alleged polling rigging.

On the other hand, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leader Ali Muhammad Khan has announced moving the Islamabad High Court (IHC) against the unannounced decision to suspend "X" services in Pakistan.

Lawyer and human rights activist Jibran Nasir has also filed a petition in the Sindh High Court against the "repeated shutdown of the internet and blocking of access to social media.

Similarly, US Congressman Greg Casar has asked the country's State Department to demand Pakistani authorities to restore access to the microblogging site X, which he said was being used to expose post-election interference.