Court asks for answers on enforcement
The Islamabad High Court has opened a fresh check on IHC social media laws by ordering telecom, broadcast and cybercrime bodies to show how well they apply rules on taking down illegal posts and resolving related complaints. In a written direction, Justice Arbab Muhammad Tahir told the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA, the telecom regulator), the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA, which oversees electronic media) and the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) to file particulars of the actions they have already taken under the applicable statutes.
The same order also covers the Ministry of Information Technology and other linked departments. They must sit together, map legal, bureaucratic and technical hurdles that slow enforcement, and describe what they have done—or plan to do—to ease those hurdles and tighten cooperation across agencies.
What the PTA figures show
Material placed before the court included PTA data on how often platforms acted when asked to block illegal material. Compliance linked to national defence and security stood at 59.1 percent. Requests tied to terrorism scored 79.51 percent. Content judged offensive to the sanctity of Islam was blocked in 76.54 percent of cases. Posts involving decency and morality saw the strongest response at 98.91 percent. Material classed as sectarian or hate speech was acted on in 64.43 percent of requests.
Broken down by service, X (once known as Twitter) answered 48.42 percent of blocking asks. Facebook’s rate was 78.57 percent, Instagram 79.52 percent, YouTube 87.34 percent and TikTok 88.68 percent. Those numbers sit at the centre of the court’s concern about uneven IHC social media compliance in practice.
Registration, PECA and institutional gaps
According to the PTA, major networks have been pressed to finish registration with the authority and name local staff to handle grievances, yet no constructive reply has come. Officials also said operators often refuse takedown asks.
The written order pointed to the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA, Pakistan’s main cybercrime statute), which envisages a Social Media Protection and Regulatory Authority with wide duties over removing or restricting illegal material. Justice Tahir asked whether agencies are using the tools already available in statute and subordinate rules. He also underlined the need to judge how PEMRA, the PTA and the NCCIA work together so complaints are resolved more effectively.
Separately, the court sought information on steps meant to curb online harassment, blackmail and the non-consensual circulation of private images or messages—issues that ordinary users often raise when social media laws in Pakistan are debated.
What comes next
The institutions named must now produce the requested record and hold the joint session on barriers and coordination. Until those filings arrive, the public picture rests on the PTA percentages and the court’s questions about unused powers and weak follow-through under existing digital content rules.
Aasan alfaaz mein
Islamabad High Court ne PTA, PEMRA aur cybercrime agency se poocha hai ke online galat content hataane ke qawaneen asal mein kitne kaam kar rahe hain. PTA ke hisaab se kuch categories mein platforms kam follow karte hain, khas tor par X. Court ne kaha ke departments mil kar rukawaton aur coordination ko dekhain. Aam logon ke liye iska matlab yeh hai ke harassment aur illegal posts ke shikwayat ke nizaam par ab adalat ki nazar hai.
