The government’s Digital Media Wing (DMW) recently released a report titled, ‘Anti-State Trends: Deep Analytics Report’. The Current analysed the report, which was discussed on Geo News programme ‘Aaj Shahzeb Khanzada Kay Sath’ on Thursday night. The Current found glaring errors in the report.
Mentioning The Current’s research, Shahzeb Khanzada stated the facts mentioned in our report. “From The Current’s analysis, the 134-page report has 85 pages that have screenshots of tweets, which means that 63.4 per cent of the report is based on screenshots of people who are using a certain hashtag that the government has identified as being anti-state. The number of tweets that are in these 85 pages amounts to 666 tweets out of which 142 tweets are from three accounts, which means that 21.3 per cent of the tweets used in this study came from three people.”
“After further analysis of the three accounts, The Current discovered that all three accounts had a combined following of less than 11,000,” mentioned Shahzeb.
حکومت کی طرف سے ٹویٹر ٹرینڈز پرمبنی رپورٹ میں کس طرح ڈیٹالیا گیا۔ دیکھیے
The report was released Wednesday evening around 5:30PM and a few hours later a disclaimer was added to the report. According to journalist Fereeha Idrees, the disclaimer was added after she raised the issue with the DMW for being highlighted in the report as a ‘replies with the most followers’ account.
Shahzeb Khanzada also mentioned that The Current reached out to TweepsMap, which was the primary analysis app used by the government for this report. The maps and information all have the Tweepsmap link on the maps and all charts in the report. We asked the CEO of TweepsMap Samir Al-Battran if they considered the analysis of the report to be authentic since it used their app service. Samir told us, “The government of Pakistan is not authorised to use our service. We will investigate how they got access to our analysis and get back to you on this.”
Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Fawad Chaudhry refuted these claims on Shahzeb Khanzada’s programme.
“Were the Twitter trends data compiled without research? Was the press conference held without reading the final draft? Was the patriotism of our own citizens deliberately questioned? How did you determine which tweet is anti and pro-state?,” asked Shahzeb.
“The data could have been complied on a single page as well. We analysed the data for the past two years, around 150 trends were made, and we checked how India and Afghanistan glorified those trends. Around 37 lac tweets were done on the very trends. We spent around 1,000 hours going through those tweets,” said Fawad Chaudhry.
کیا بس ٹویٹر ٹرینڈز کا ڈیٹا اکھٹا کر کے بغیر تحقیق کیے رپورٹ بنا دی گئی؟ کیا بغیر پڑھے ہی پریس کانفرنس کردی گئی؟ کیا جان بوجھ کر اپنے ہی شہریوں کی حب الوطنی پر سوال اٹھا دیے گئے؟ دیکھیے 1/2
Shahzeb reiterated the fact that the report should have included how India and Afghanistan were involved in generating, promoting, and glorifying the very trends and sentiment analysis of the tweets should have been checked.
” I think you did not read the mechanism and neither did you try to understand the work done in the report,” replied the minister.
“The positive and negative sentiment does not matter, what matters is that people participated in the trend. India did all this because it wanted to portray to the international spheres that there is chaos within Pakistan,” added Fawad.
Former Interior Minister Rehman Malik also thanked Shahzeb for highlighting how his anti-India tweet was also part of the DMW report. “I hope someone from the Govt will apologise to me tomorrow.”
A report released by the Digital Media Wing (DMW) of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting titled, ‘Anti-State Trends: Deep Analytics Report’ is deeply misleading and based on assumptions instead of facts, The Current has discovered after analysing the report.
Glaring errors and almost comical additions, the report makes a correlation between analysing hashtags on Twitter to determine if someone is anti-state and is responsible for starting trends against Pakistan.
Before analysing the report, The Current researched and spoke with analysts who are well-versed with digital analysis. There is no record of any report on hashtag analysis to determine trends at a government level in any country at any time. Pakistan is the only country that has created a report based on hashtag analysis. Worldwide, hashtag analysis is considered to be deeply unreliable since it cannot understand what is written in the tweet – it is just able to see what is being discussed.
WHAT IS THE REPORT?
The report is a compilation of hashtags that created trends that the government deems anti-state. The report shows information collected about hashtag trends and then lists pages of screenshots that show different Twitter handles sharing tweets that have the ‘anti-state’ hashtag. They do not differentiate between users and also label ‘influencers’ – people with a following who have tweeted or retweeted/replied to the hashtag.
In effect, the report seems to declare all the users in the report as anti-state, until one prominent journalist got them to add a disclaimer last night.
HOW WAS THE INFORMATION COLLECTED?
Since the whole report is based on hashtag analysis, it will be considered to be unreliable data collection and cannot be considering as a legitimate report in any institution.
When The Current reached out to General Manager of the Digital Media Wing (DMW), Imran Ghazali, he responded to the question of faulty analysis of hashtags by saying, “The purpose of this report was to ascertain factual data and to analyze social media trends that were anti-state, Data was collected after analysing Pakistan Twitter Panel from June 2019- August 2021. Those hashtags were marked for data collection where the content of tweets were planned and propagated through a network to spread anti-state trends.”
According to a source in the government, the information used is public. “Publicly released data is accurate. It’s no rocket science, anybody with a credit card can get this data. Hence made public.”
From The Current’s analysis, the data was collected by using a web application called, ‘Tweeps Map’, which is open to the public.
From our findings, the 134-page report has 85 pages that have screenshots of tweets, which means that 63.4 per cent of the report is based on screenshots of people who are using a certain hashtag that the government has identified as being anti-state. The number of tweets that are in these 85 pages amount to 666 tweets out of which 142 tweets are from three accounts, which means that 21.3 per cent of the tweets used in this study came from three people.
After further analysis of the three accounts, The Current discovered that all three accounts had a combined following of less than 11,000.
We discovered that the hashtag #SanctionPakistan was ‘analysed’ for 41 days, Pakhtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM) hashtags were clubbed together as “PTM Trends Tantamount to National Security” (the report doesn’t list which hashtags were used within this topic) and were ‘analysed’ for 22 months, #AbAwamSmashNahiHogi was ‘analysed’ for one day, and #StateKilledUsmanKakar, #IsraeliJetinPakistan, ‘JUIF Anti State Trend’, was ‘analysed’ but no time duration is given.
WHY AND WHEN WAS THE ‘DISCLAIMER’ ADDED?
The report was released Wednesday evening around 5:30PM and a few hours later a disclaimer was added to the report. According to journalist Fereeha Idrees, the disclaimer was added after she raised the issue with the DMW for being highlighted in the report as a ‘replies with the most followers’ account.
“I have always raised my voice against any propaganda against our state but the way the report was compiled, it made me look as one of the culprits and suddenly social media was rife with messages calling me anti-state,” Fereeha told The Current, “When I made the query, I was given the following explanation.”
The explanation given to Fereeha by the DMW stated, “All the accounts in the report doesn’t mean they took part in the anti-state activity…It shows the whole journey of the trends/hashtags, so in this case Fareeha Idrees replied/rebutted on the Israeli related trend and that’s why it mentions ‘Replies with most mentions’ in the report.”
After the DMW response, Fereeha demanded that they add a disclaimer to the report. A disclaimer was added which stated, “If an account is listed in a report – it doesn’t always imply that the content of the tweet is Anti-State. Some accounts have engaged/replied with an anti-state hashtag to rebut. But since they used the hashtag their accounts got listed in the report.”
Imran Ghazali admitted to adding the disclaimer after Fereeha raised an objection about the fairness of the report.
The Current asked Ghazali about how they have divided the report to show which people mentioned were anti-state and which ones were considered pro-state. Ghazali refused to directly answer the question and stated, “We have not given any number for pro-state or anti-state accounts but showed below the hashtags we highlighted the accounts which contributed to a certain hashtag – tweets, top contributors, replies etc.”
When we pressed him to answer the question about how the people selected were separated into anti-state and pro-state, he said, “If an account is listed in a report – it doesn’t always imply that the content of the tweet is Anti-State. Some accounts have engaged/replied with an anti-state hashtag to rebut. But since they used the hashtag their accounts got listed in the report.”
The implication of his answers show that the report does not – and cannot- differentiate people’s points of view on a tweet, which means that someone who has posted a ‘pro-state’ tweet condemning the hashtag will also be added into the list of someone who is considered anti-state.
WAS THE GOVERNMENT ALLOWED TO USE THE APP ‘TWEEPSMAP’?
The Current reached out to TweepsMap, which was the primary analysis app used by the government for this report. The maps and information all have the Tweepsmap link on the maps and all charts in the report. We asked the CEO of TweepsMap Samir Al-Battran if they considered the analysis of the report to be authentic since it used their app service. Samir told us, “The government of Pakistan is not authorised to use our service. We will investigate how they got access to our analysis and get back to you on this.”
We asked him for further details, asking if an individual used their service for analysis for a government funded report, would that be against their rules, to which Samir replied and said, “…Government agencies go through a vetting process before we allow them to use our service. We were never in communication with the government of Pakistan…Yes, [using the app without informing us what it is for] would be a misrepresentation and is definitely against our rules.”
The Current asked Ghazali if they used the application and if they had authorisation to which he said, “We used different tools/APIs including our internal tools to analyse data”. We asked him since TweepsMap is the only one that is being listed in the report, if they had gotten a subscription for the government of Pakistan to which we got no response.
WHAT ELSE IS IN THE REPORT?
We analysed the tweets used in the 85 screenshots present in the report and found some comical discrepancies. One retweet had the #SajalAly hashtag along with the ‘anti-state’ hashtag ‘#AccountabilityofZarbeAzb’. We went through the Twitter account to find that the tweet mentioned in the report was a meme of Dr Firdous Ashiq Awan.
A tweet by former Interior Minister Rehman Malik is included in the #SanctionPakistan list in which he is criticising Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the US.
The tweet Rehman Malik retweeted
The report also includes references to “a group of Wikipedia Admins most of whom are based in India,” giving state level credibility to an online encyclopedia that can be edited by anyone. With glaring spelling mistakes and analysis based on unauthorised data, the summary of the Digital Media Wing Deep Analysis report has been summed up by one senior data analyst based in Singapore, “That just goes to show… they don’t understand how it works.”
Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry has clarified his stance on Noor Mukadam’s murder coverage. Fawad made a comment regarding the social media outrage after the murder of Noor Mukadam, while addressing a press conference along with National Security Adviser Moeed Yusuf.
During the press conference, Fawad Chaudhry — while referring to Noor Mukadam’s murder case — said that a campaign was designed through social media to show that Pakistan is an unsafe country for women, adding that Indian channel WION made videos on Noor murder case of hundreds of minutes to portray that Pakistan is not a safe country for women.
Chaudhry received backlash on social media for his comments, after which The Current reached out to him for his comment on the matter. “There is an Indian channel WION, which made 3O videos on how unsafe Pakistan is for women, and see this case [Noor Mukadam murder] has happened in Pakistan. This is how [Indian channels] make the issues bigger and create a [specific] narrative,” said the information minister while speaking exclusively to The Current.
Noor Mukadam was murdered on July 20 in Islamabad. Noor’s murder sparked outrage in the country and many protests and vigils were held in Pakistan and abroad subsequently and the story was covered by all major news outlets in the world including CNN, BBC, The Guardian and The New York Times.
Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi tweeted, “Let Quaid e Azam’s historic speech of August 11 1947 resonate & let us unite to honour spirit & sanctity of his words. Celebrating the white in our flag.”
We have a commitment to uphold Jinnah’s Pakistan, where inter-faith harmony & tolerance reign supreme. Let Quaid e Azam’s historic speech of August 11 1947 resonate & let us unite to honour spirit & sanctity of his words. Celebrating the white in our flag #NationalMinorityDay
Human Rights Minister Shireen Mazari tweeted that August 11 is a reaffirmation of the vision of Quaid-e-Azam.
National Minorities Day – 11 Aug – is a reaffirmation of the vision of Quaid-i-Azam and a commitment to uphold the rights of Minorities embodied in our Constitution. This is our obligation & we must stay on track to fulfil this duty not thru mere words but actions on the ground.
Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting, Fawad Chaudhry tweeted, “Reopening of the mandir in Rahim Yar Khan on August 11 signifies the importance government attaches to rights of minorities, respect for religious beliefs is our core policy.”
Reopening of Mander in Rahim Yar Khan on 11th August signifies importance Government attaches to rights of minorities, respect for religious beliefs is our core policy and we will ensure all citizens enjoy life and liberty as per Constitution of Pakistan mandate. pic.twitter.com/oQoaKW0l9d
In an interview with Stephen Sackur on BBCHARDtalk, senior journalist Hamid Mir talked about why he was banned on Geo News, press freedom, censorship under Prime Minister Imran Khan, attacks on journalists, and how he is worried for his own safety in Pakistan.
Disappointment on being off-air
Stephen Sackur questioned Hamid Mir as to how disappointed he was with his employers [Geo News] and the Jang group who did not stand by him. Sackur also questioned how Mir felt that he had lost his voice and platform as a journalist because he was suspended from his channel.
Mir said he was certainly disappointed but did understand the circumstances under which the decision was taken place.
“Mir Shakil ur Rehman was arrested last year and he remained in the detention of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) for more than seven months for a three-decade-old case, which was not a very big case. And I think that he was arrested, he was detained, just because of the freedom he was trying to give us. He got bail from the Supreme Court but his name was placed on the Exit Control List. He cannot leave Pakistan. He is already being held at gunpoint. So, my employers, the gun is already at their head. So when they were asked to ban Hamid Mir, they banned me. So I can understand their problem,” replied Mir.
Imran Khan is a helpless Prime Minister
The BBC host asked Mir that in the past he had a friendly relationship with PM Imran Khan so did he ever think that PM Imran personally wanted to see him taken off-air.
Hamid replied, “It’s a very difficult question for me to respond [to], but I will try to very honestly. Imran Khan stood by me in 2007 when I was banned by General Pervez Musharraf, and yes at that time he was the biggest supporter of media freedom in Pakistan. Yes, I provided him a lot of space on my TV shows because he was in the Opposition, and you can say that I was friendly with him when he was in the Opposition. But when he became PM, I started raising questions. I even met him personally, and I asked him that your government should provide more space to the media because you are the biggest beneficiary of media freedom.”
“One of my interviews with the former president, Asif Ali Zardari, was banned on my show, on my TV channel and some other Opposition leaders were also banned on different TV channels. So we started criticising Imran Khan and so I think he was not happy with my criticism.
Imran Khan ‘is not a very powerful prime minister’ says banned Pakistani journalist @HamidMirPAK who also says Prime Minister Khan is ‘helpless’ and ‘cannot help me’ pic.twitter.com/KwMou3lU8M
“The second part of your question is very important. I think that Imran Khan is not directly responsible for imposing a ban on me. And I don’t think he wants me to be off-air. But like past prime ministers, he is not a very powerful prime minister and I think he is helpless and he can’t help me,” said Mir.
Concerned about my personal security
Sackur questioned Mir if he feared the toxic environment in Pakistan and how concerned was he about his personal safety in the country after two assassination attempts on him. Mir answered, “Yes, I am very concerned about my personal security for a long time. I asked my family to leave Pakistan and my family left, my daughter and wife have already left. I was also approached by some people who suggested I leave Pakistan. But I decided not to leave.”
Ready to face imprisonment
The HARDtalk host asked Hamid Mir if he was ready to face imprisonment for the accusations against him, to which Mir responded, ” Yes, and I am ready to face life imprisonment because if they will be able to convict me at least the whole world will come to know what is going on in Pakistan. The whole world is already aware of what is going on in Pakistan because I am a living example of censorship in Pakistan. Everybody knows what happened to Hamid Mir and why he is banned and everybody knows the names of the people which I have not mentioned, everybody knows who was responsible for imposing a ban on me.”
‘I’m ready to face life imprisonment’ says Pakistani journalist @HamidMirPAK who faces accusations of sedition and has been suspended from his TV job and newspaper column after speaking out against attacks on press freedom in the country pic.twitter.com/kXuSvozXXi
“The common Pakistanis are very wise, they are very clever. They know each and everything about what’s going on. But you see, there is no rule of law in Pakistan. And we only want justice, we want that the rule of law should be established in Pakistan. And if a journalist is asking questions, don’t try to silence his voice,” added Mir.
State of media freedom in Pakistan
Stephen Sackur questioned Mir whether there was a climate of fear in Pakistan when it comes to journalists or journalism.
“Yes, definitely, there is a climate of fear in Pakistan. A lot of young journalists, they are very disappointed and look at the state of media freedom in Pakistan. When Mr Imran Khan became prime minister in 2018 Pakistan was ranked at 139 on the World Press Freedom Index. Today, in 2021, when I am talking to you, it is 145. So Pakistan lost six points in the last three years,” said Mir.
He further added, “According to the International Federation of Journalists, Pakistan is one of the five most dangerous countries for journalists in the whole world. This is not good for Pakistan, for its reputation and credibility in the international community. And yes, there is a climate of fear in Pakistan because Pakistani journalists think journalism is becoming very difficult in this country and this government of Imran Khan [is] now planning some more anti-media laws which is not acceptable to us.”
Rule of law only solution in Pakistan
Commenting on the grave danger to democracy in Pakistan, Hamid Mir said, “I think that the rule of law is the solution to all of our problems. That’s why we want a general democracy in Pakistan because the founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah was a democrat and I am a follower of his.”
‘All those people who are trying to snatch media freedom from us are enemies of Pakistan’ says banned Pakistani journalist @HamidMirPAKpic.twitter.com/PKNluDrpJh
Federal Minister for Information Fawad Chaudhry announced that Prime Minister Imran Khan has nominated Abdul Qayyum Niazi as the next premier of Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK).
The information minister took to Twitter and said that the premier made the decision after “considerable consultations and suggestions”.
طویل مشاورت اور تجاویز کے جائزے کے بعد وزیر اعظم پاکستان و چیرمین تحریک انصاف عمران خان نے نومنتخب ایم ایل ائے جناب عبدالقیوم نیازی کو وزیر اعظم آزاد کشمیر کے عہدے کیلئے نامزد کیا ہے وہ ایک متحرک اور حقیقی سیاسی کارکن ہیں جن کا دل کارکنوں کے ساتھ دھڑکتا ہے۔
In a tweet, the minister wrote, “He [Abdul Qayyum Niazi] is a dynamic and genuine political activist and his heart beats for the people.”
Abdul Qayyum Niazi was a member of the AJK Legislative Assembly from border area Abbaspur Poonch. He is also Central Joint Secretary of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).
Last week, PM Khan started interviewing some of the elected members of the Azad Jammu Kashmir Legislative Assembly for the slot of AJK prime minister.
PM Khan took lengthy interviews of the candidates in which he asked questions about the environment, tourism, economy, border issues, and their future plans.
Prime Minister Imran Khan has started interviewing some of the elected members of the Azad Jammu Kashmir Legislative Assembly for the slot of AJK prime minister, reports Dawn.
Barrister Sultan Mahmood, Khawaja Farooq, Sardar Tanveer Ilyas Khan, and Azhar Sadiq had separate meetings with PM Imran.
PM Khan is expected to announce the name of the new AJK premier before August 5.
Speaking withDawn, Information and Broadcasting Minister Fawad Chaudhry said, “Yes, the prime minister has started interviews of candidates and now no one can call himself as the most favourite one.”
Chaudhry said four to five candidates for the office of AJK premier met PM Khan on Thursday and almost the same number of people would meet him on Friday.
“The prime minister is taking lengthy interviews of the candidates in which he is asking questions about the environment, tourism, economy, border issues, and their future plans,” he added.
Fawad said PM Khan would also finalise the names of the president and speaker and deputy speaker of the AJK Legislative Assembly.
Last year, the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) had demanded the expulsion of the French ambassador and a boycott of French products, asking the federal government to take “practical steps” otherwise it would be compelled to take “extreme action”.
After the government’s refusal, a rally was led by then-TLP chief Allama Khadim Hussain Rizvi, who urged the federal government to “declare jihad” against France.
Protests erupted across major cities in Pakistan.
On April 12 after the now-proscribed Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) chief Saad Hussain Rizvi was detained by security forces in Lahore, TLP again started protests and threatened the state to adhere to the parties demands.
After the violent rallies, TLP was placed in the list of proscribed organisations, under the 1st schedule of Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJ &K) Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA), 2014.
TLP was involved in political activities and carrying out its election campaigns in AJK, for the polls which were to be held on July 25.
Under ATA, banned organisations are not allowed to engage in any political activities.
However, despite the ban, TLP also participated in the NA-249 by-elections in Karachi on April 28. TLP came third in the Karachi by-election.
Yesterday, in Sialkot, PP-38 constituency, a candidate from the TLP participated as a candidate for the election.
Talking to The Current, Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry while commenting on the recent participation of the party in the by-elections said, “The government went about it in a legal way, which was to first announce that Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) has been banned.”
“It gave them (TLP) the right to appeal the government’s decision. Their appeal was reviewed by the federal cabinet, which dismissed their appeal,” added Fawad.
“Now when it comes to their political participation in the Sialkot elections: they were not allowed to take part in any electoral activity,” said the federal minister.
Fawad added, “The government has notified that the TLP has been proscribed and therefore cannot take part in any activities. Now, this notification will go to the Supreme Court (SC) and proceedings will take place in the apex court as per Pakistan’s Election Act.”
“TLP will not be able to take part in the elections if the SC decides to uphold their ban and consequently bans them under the Election Act, 2017,” stated the information minister.
Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Fawad Chaudhry, while speaking on Geo News’ programme ‘Jirga’, said, “Two days prior to the story of Pegasus spyware being published, I received a letter from The Guardian revealing that there was a list of phone numbers that had been hacked. Three numbers previously used by Prime Minister Imran Khan were also in the list.”
Fawad said that the letter further added that he needed to confirm whether the numbers included in the list belonged to PM Khan or not.
Fawad said that a team was being put together by the government, who would do the forensics to verify whether the premier’s phone was hacked or not. Only then will the government be able to tell if the attempt to hack the phone was successful or not.
“It is confirmed that an attempt to hack the phone was made,” said Fawad.
On being asked by Saleem Safi that if the phone was indeed hacked and the Indians did get the data from the premier’s phone, what implications would it have for the country, Fawad replied, ” PM Khan’s phone did not have messages of Gujarat massacre like Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. His phone does not have any orders of murder in it.”
Fawad condemned how Modi and his government had hacked the phones of Indian journalists, judges, his own government officials, and other world leaders and said that the United Nations must intervene in this regard.
Fawad Chaudhry added that the Foreign Office has taken notice of India’s use of Israeli spyware, Pegasus, to hack Prime Minister Imran Khan’s phone and had already said: “We call on the relevant UN bodies to thoroughly investigate the matter, bring the facts to light, and hold the Indian perpetrators to account.”
When questioned about the meeting between Imran Khan and Narendra Modi before he came into power and whether it was discussed with the then government, Fawad responded that PM Khan’s meeting was public and the media was present. Fawad criticised Nawaz Sharif’s meeting with Afghan National Security Adviser (NSA) Hamdullah Mohib in London and said this was news shared with the Afghan media.
“I won’t call Nawaz Sharif a traitor but it was a very irresponsible act by him,” added Fawad.
Earlier this week, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Nawaz Sharif was met by Afghan National Security Adviser Hamdullah Mohib and State Minister for Peace Sayed Sadat Naderi.
The National Security Council of Afghanistan (NSCA) gave an update about the meeting on Twitter Saturday, saying that the Afghan state minister for peace and NSA discussed “matters of mutual interest” with the former Pakistan prime minister.
Nawaz Sharif’s meeting faced extreme criticism from the government.
Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Secretary-General Ahsan Iqbal has served a show-cause notice to Ismail Gujjar for his controversial statement a day ago during the Azad Jammu and Kashmir election wherein he threatened to “call India for help” if attempts were made [by the government] to rig the polls.
Talking to the media, Chaudhry Ismail Gujjar said, “If you try to commit such an act [rig elections], I will call India for help … I warn you this is the election of Azad Kashmir and its people, let it be peaceful.”
— Ghulam Abbas Shah (@ghulamabbasshah) July 25, 2021
Reacting to the statement, Ahsan Iqbal issued a show-cause notice to Gujjar.
“A statement given by you appeared on the electronic media in which you have irresponsibly stated that you will seek help from India for your election,” the notice reads, asking Gujjar to give an explanation within seven days.
Issuing a clarification on to Geo News, Ismail had said his statement was directed towards the administration. “India kills Kashmiris in occupied Kashmir and over here, these people are taking down our camps,” he had added.
Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Fawad Chaudhry, while appreciating the PML-N for issuing a show-cause notice to a “political orphan” [Gujjar], said it would have been better had the party served a notice to Nawaz Sharif for meeting Pakistan’s enemy. Fawad was referring to Nawaz Sharif’s meeting with Afghan National Security Adviser (NSA) Hamdullah Mohib in London.
احسن اقبال صاحب نے ہندوستان سے مدد مانگنے کے بیان پر ایک سیاسی یتیم کو نوٹس دیا ہے جو اچھی بات ہے لیکن کیا ہی اچھا ہو مسلم لیگ کی مجلس عاملہ نواز شریف کو حمداللہ محب جیسے پاکستان دشمن اور ہمدوستان کے پروردہ شخص سے ملاقات پر بوٹس جاری کرے اور ان سے بازپرس کرے؟ pic.twitter.com/l1TOES5T84
