The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Monday directed the federal cabinet to take up the matter regarding the ban on video-sharing social media app TikTok.
The social media platform was banned by the PTA on July 21 due to its failure to remove ‘inappropriate content’. The hearing was presided over by IHC Chief Justice Athar Minallah. Maryam Farid appeared on behalf of the petitioner and Munawar Iqbal Dogar from Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) and Deputy Attorney General Tayyab Shah appeared before the court on behalf of the federation. The high court inquired from PTA’s lawyer whether the app was being currently used across the country.
“Around 99% of the people are using the app in the country through a proxy,” the PTA counsel replied. To this, the court questioned why was the authority so adamant about banning the app if they can not beat technology and also asked why does the PTA want to cut the country off from the world. The court also inquired whether PTA had been asked to take policy direction from the government over the matter.
“Has the government given any policy?” the court inquired. “The PTA should take instructions from the federal cabinet. Why didn’t the PTA seek policy instructions from the federal cabinet on court orders?”
On August 7, Justice Minallah said, in his interim order, that after reading the court verdicts, it had become clear that they did not call for a ban on the video-sharing application TikTok. According to media reports, Justice Minallah issued a six-page interim order on the petition against the ban on TikTok which also mentioned a report submitted by PTA in the Sindh High Court (SHC) wherein the authority revealed that the ban on the social media platform was due to objectionable content by one per cent of its users. The report by PTA further stated that the content of the other 99 per cent of the user base was non-objectionable.