Over the past 3.5 years, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has written to X three times seeking closure of an account in PTI founder Imran Khan’s name, but received no response, it emerged on Thursday.
The information came to light in a PTA report, seen by Dawn and submitted to the Islamabad High Court (IHC) today in relation to a petition against the incarcerated former premier regarding “inflammatory posts” made from an X account operated in his name.
The report stated that the first request was sent on August 21, 2022, to X, and the body received no response from the social media platform.
On April 18, 2024, PTA submitted another request for the blocking of Imran’s account via email.
The report said that the email included “citation of relevant court orders against Imran and details of his conviction and sentence to 14, 10, and seven years in Toshakhana, cypher, and unlawful marriage cases”.
However, it added that once again, no response was received from X.
The report added that on November 27, 2025, PTA wrote to the platform seeking the blocking of 47 tweets from Imran’s X account.
However, out of the 47, X only blocked one tweet.
PTA, in its report, also noted that the over-the-top (OTT) services operating in Pakistan were not regulated as they were registered in their country of origin.
It added that the companies “are not necessarily bound by the region/country in which the user is accessing their content”.
It also took note of the fact that “content management, social media operators do provide an official channel to the users as well as the regulators to lodge their complaints”.
The authority said that the “other option remains to block the internet traffic flowing to these operations, however, since they utilise secure channels, selective blocking on their content cannot be enabled.”
“But complete access to their services can be revoked on a best effort basis,” it added.
The authority added that in October 2021, PTA had requested social media companies to comply with Section 7 (6) of the Blocking of Unlawful Online Content (Procedure, Oversight and Safeguards) Rules and register themselves with PTA and “appoint a local compliance grievance officer”.
“However, no affirmative response has been received to date,” it added.
On Wednesday, the IHC took up the petition regarding the X account and questioned how proceedings in the case could continue if authorities were denying his counsel access to him.
The former premier’s family and party leaders have recently faced increased restrictions in meeting him.
During yesterday’s proceedings, the court told the PTA counsel that the authority’s response to the petition was “unsatisfactory”.
In September last year, a petition was filed in the IHC challenging the alleged inflammatory posts made from the official X account of the PTI founder during his imprisonment.
A written reply submitted to the court by Adiala jail authorities last year denied that the X account was being operated from within the jail premises.
Superintendent of the Adiala jail stated the PTI founder was under strict surveillance and had no access to any prohibited device, “particularly mobile phones”.
