Daily Times

LAHORE: Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB) Chairman Dr Umar Saif ruled out any involvement or assistant of PITB to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) in the development or its operation at any stage.

Addressing a press conference on Friday at Arfa Karim Tower, he categorically refuted the news reports and posts alleging PITB’s involvement in RTS issue appearing in a section of the press and social media. The ECP secretary has also assured on phone to clarify the matter, he said.

He further stated that PITB being a provincial organ has helped out free of cost on their formal request to the federal and provincial governments of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan, Sindh, Gilgit Baltistan and Azad Jammu & Kashmir in developing their various projects related to health, police, automation of Hajj etc. PITB was ready to extend its professional expertise and skills to any organ of the state as and when required, he added.

Referring to the issue, he termed it ridiculous, baseless, misleading and contrary to the facts. Facebook was approached and informed about the fake and inappropriate content who have removed it from their domain, which included various such pages being operated from outside Pakistan such as Lakeer.com, which circulated the fake news, he said.

He lauded the course of action by ECP for holding a formal inquiry through Cabinet Division in this matter and remarked it appropriate and added that PITB has not been attached in it. PITB has decided to launch a formal complaint to the Federal Investigation Agency for probing the fake and misleading RTS news to set the record straight, he said.

According to the information received, the RTS could only be operated through passcode/pincode by returning officers, therefore, it might have lack of training problem or availability of internet etc, he replied to a question.

He stated that forwarding any news without verification was not only unethical but it was also liable for legal proceeding as after an incident in India for circulating a fake news on Whatsapp caused lynching of two persons and to cope up with such situation Whatsapp has introduced forward option, which could now easily identify the account and the person, spreading fake damaging news.

Replying to a question, PITB Chairman Dr Umar Saif said that PITB’s various mega projects were successfully compiling large scale data in seconds while RTS had to deal with the data of 85,000 polling stations, which was not a big issue. Since PITB has developed mega and flagship projects like eStamping, eVaccs, eLearn, Land Record Management, agri subsidies etc, therefore, this may have been wrongly presumed that PITB might have developed RTS, which was not correct as an agreement was signed between the National Database & Regulation Authority and ECP in this regard, which was widely reported in the print and the electronic media on February 15, 2018, he remarked.

He added that ECP sought suggestions from Information Technology boards of all the four provinces for this system.

Published in Daily Times, August 4^th 2018.