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Elon Musk's X suffers massive outage in Pakistan amid election rigging allegations
Imran Khan's PTI party has called for a judicial probe into election result manipulation.
Services of the social media platform X remained disrupted in Pakistan for the third consecutive day on Monday, following massive rigging allegations in the elections and the public admission of vote manipulation by a senior election official.
According to Downdetector, the outage was reported a little after 10:30 am and persisted until noon. Services were restored around 12:24 pm (local time) but were disrupted again after 1 pm.
Downdetector, which tracks outages, showed that the most affected areas were Karachi, Rawalpindi, Lahore, and Gujranwala.
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Pak officials claims he oversaw poll rigging
Rawalpindi Commissioner, Liaquat Ali Chattha, claimed he oversaw election rigging against Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and alleged involvement of the chief justice and election commissioner. He resigned, taking responsibility.
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Soon after Chattha disclosed it publicly, social media erupted, demanding an election audit to address alleged manipulation and return the "stolen mandate" to Imran Khan's PTI party, which claims over 180 seats in the 266-member National Assembly.
PTI called for a judicial probe into election result manipulation.
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Authorities clamp down on social media
"The Pakistani authorities found no other way to control that criticism and chose to disrupt X in the country," an official source told Press Trust of India on Monday.
"This is the third consecutive day that people in Pakistan are facing disruptions in accessing the social media platform; even with the use of Virtual Private Networks (VPN), they are facing issues," he said.
X disrupted since Saturday
On Saturday, Internet monitor Netblocks reported nationwide disruption to X in Pakistan amid protests over election fraud allegations after Commissioner Chattha's resignation.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan criticised the shutdown, highlighting its economic impact and infringement on democratic rights.
The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) hasn't provided reasons for the X disruption.
Earlier, on February 8, Pakistan authorities shut down internet and mobile services on election day.
