IHC Orders PTA, Pemra, NCCIA to Report on Online Harassment Enforcement as X Compliance Exposed

IHC Orders PTA, Pemra and NCCIA to Report on Online Harassment Enforcement

The Islamabad High Court has ordered Pakistan’s federal government and its three key regulators to report, in writing, on how the country’s laws against online harassment, blackmail and the unauthorised circulation of private material are actually being enforced. The interim order puts the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (Pemra) and the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) on a court-supervised deadline to explain what their powers have delivered in practice.

The directions were issued by a single-member bench of Justice Arbab Muhammad Tahir in a petition filed by Dr Raana Ahsan, and were reported on 27 October 2026. Each respondent has been asked to file a comprehensive report on the measures it has taken to implement the relevant provisions: online safety, the removal of unlawful content, the protection of children and other vulnerable users, the prevention of harassment and blackmail, and the redress of complaints about the misuse of electronic and digital media.

The bench also directed the interior secretary to convene a coordination meeting with the Ministry of Information Technology, Pemra, the PTA, the NCCIA and other ministries and departments. That meeting must identify where inter-agency coordination is failing, clarify which body is responsible for what, and set out a workable enforcement mechanism — including what legal remedies are available against platforms that do not comply. A joint report with an implementation timetable must go back to the court, which has fixed the next hearing for 23 November 2026.

PTA’s Own Figures: X the Least Compliant Platform

The most revealing part of the order is its annexure: a report from the PTA itself measuring how often its content-blocking requests to social media platforms are actually carried out. The figures, reported by both The News International and The Express Tribune on 27 October, show a wide gap between platforms.

By platform, both reports agree: compliance stands at 48.42 per cent on X, 78.57 per cent on Facebook, 79.52 per cent on Instagram, 87.34 per cent on YouTube and 88.68 per cent on TikTok. In other words, fewer than one in two blocking requests sent to X are acted on, while nearly nine in ten are carried out by TikTok.

By category of content, the PTA reported compliance of 59.01 per cent for material relating to Pakistan’s security and defence, 79.51 per cent for terrorism-related material, 76.28 per cent for contempt of court, 76.54 per cent for material against the glory of Islam, 40.38 per cent for defamation or impersonation, 98.91 per cent for decency and morality, and 67.43 per cent for sectarian or hate speech. The Express Tribune’s account gave 64.43 per cent for the sectarian and hate-speech category; the two figures have not been reconciled publicly.

The court did not take the numbers at face value. The bench said they required a considered explanation about the effectiveness of the existing mechanisms and the measures available to secure compliance with lawful directions — and asked the PTA to explain why it has not invoked the coercive provisions available to it when platforms refuse to comply.

Platforms Cite Their Own Community Guidelines

The PTA’s report to the court also set out the limits it says it operates under. Requests to social media companies to meet Pakistan’s registration requirements and appoint local compliance and grievance officers have been made since the relevant rules were notified in October 2021 — and no affirmative response has been received, the regulator told the court.

The authority also said that the scope of its powers has in practice narrowed its role to approaching operators for content removal or asking them to take technical measures against their services, and that such requests are frequently declined on the grounds of the platforms’ own community guidelines.

The court asked pointedly why the registration requirements have not been implemented, why practical and legal difficulties in enforcement have not been overcome, and why coercive provisions in the law have gone unused. The bench said its directions were meant to facilitate the effective implementation of the law and make statutory remedies practically available to complainants.

The laws in question sit in the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA) 2016, which provides for the establishment of a Social Media Protection and Regulatory Authority with functions including online safety, the protection of users’ rights, the enlistment of social media platforms and the removal or blocking of unlawful content. The order asks the government to account for how that machinery is working in practice — and where it is not, why.

What Happens Next

Nothing in the interim order changes the law by itself. What it does is put four institutions and two ministries on a written deadline, with a judge waiting on 23 November 2026 for the joint report and the implementation timetable that must accompany it.

If the reports show that the powers exist on paper and go unused in practice, the pressure lands on the ministries that must establish, staff and fund the enforcement machinery. If they show the opposite, the PTA’s own figures — including 48.42 per cent compliance on X — become the starting point for the next argument about how Pakistan polices the platforms where much of the country’s online harassment and blackmail now happens.

Meanwhile, the compliance picture remains contested. Separately, the PTA has disputed a report on social media compliance rates, saying the overall compliance rate stands at 86.38 per cent rather than the much lower figure quoted in that report. All eyes are now on the November hearing, where the regulators must put their evidence on the record.

Sources: KhabarWire’s detailed report on the IHC order (27 Oct 2026, citing The News International and The Express Tribune’s court reports), and EIN Presswire’s Social Media Newswire (29 Oct 2026) on the PTA’s dispute of compliance-rate reporting.