Information | Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: Twelve years after Khyber Pakhtunkhwa became Pakistan’s first province to enact a Right to Information (RTI) law, the Free and Fair Election Network (Fafen) notes the pioneering framework remains “underutilised and vulnerable to disinformation due to weak enforcement and structural gaps”. In a policy brief released Saturday titled “From Pioneer to Performer: Making Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Right to Information Act Work Against Disinformation”, Fafen urged the KP Assembly and provincial government to launch targeted legal and institutional reforms to transform KP’s pioneering right to information framework into an effective mechanism for proactive disclosure and public accountability. KP enacted the law after Article 19A on the “right to information” was added to the Constitution through the 18th Amendment in 2010. But Fafen’s assessment of 190 provincial public bodies’ websites found a stark implementation gap: on average, public bodies proactively disclosed only 57 per cent of the information the law ...

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting on Saturday rejected claims about a Pakistani jet being shot down in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar and the pilot being captured. The ministry’s fact check account on X attributed the claims to Afghan Taliban officials that were “amplified by Indian media”. “The Ministry of Defence of the so-called Islamic Emirate claimed that Afghan forces shot down a Pakistani fighter jet in Nangarhar and captured its pilot alive. The claim was widely amplified by Indian media and Afghan propaganda outlets,” it said. The ministry further said Pakistan’s armed forces had not reported any aircraft loss and stated that no “independent international media outlet or defence monitoring agency” had verified the claim. “The story relies solely on statements from Afghan officials and selective media amplification,” it said. It further stated that there was no visual proof of crash debris, the wreckage site or the captured pilot. “No geolocated imagery or satellite evidence supports the claim,” i...

Minister for Information and Broadcasting Attaullah Tarar has congratulated the newly elected office bearers of Lahore Press Club.

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MoIB) on Monday debunked a claim by former United States special envoy for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad, who had alleged that a ISIS- Khorasan (ISIS-K) commander had been killed in Punjab. On Sunday night, Khalilzad said on social media platform X, “Good news from #Pakistan: Reportedly a senior ISIS-K commander Burhan, also known as Zaid, was killed in Patak part of Akhtarabad city in Punjab.” In response to the post, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting’s official fact-checking account said the incident in question took place in Habibabad in Kasur district on March 5 and not in Akhtarabad as claimed. “The victim, Burhan, was killed by a dacoity/robbery-related incident or a case of personal enmity, not a counter-terror operation,” the ministry said, adding that a first information report (FIR) of the incident was also registered on March 6 at the Saddar Pattoki police station. It said that Burhan was living with his father-in-law, Shah Muhammad, near a fr...

Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Attaullah Tarar has expressed deep sorrow over the passing of the mother of senior anchorperson Fareeha Idrees.