ISLAMABAD: The ministry of information technology and telecommunication on Monday informed the Islamabad High Court (IHC) that it had dissolved the Inter-Ministerial Committee for the Evaluation of Websites (IMCEW) and assigned the job to the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA).

The information was placed before the court by Nasir Ayaz, the director (legal) of the IT ministry, during the hearing of a petition filed by a digital rights organisation - Bolo Bhi.

The petitioner contended that after its formation through an executive order in 2006, the IMCEW had been issuing orders for the content take-down.

The petition maintained that the IMCEW was prone to political hijacking and pressure, and had been used to personal and political ends to stem ‘undesirable’ and dissenting opinion.

The IT ministry in its written reply pointed out that a director of the NGO had already appeared as an ‘amicus curie’ (friend of court) in an identical petition pending before the Lahore High Court (LHC).

Under the law, he added, multiple petitions cannot be filed on the same subject at different forums by a single petitioner.

The ministry claimed that the petitioner did not raise any specific incident of blockage of a website that had infringed upon their fundamental rights.

The petitioner, on the other hand, sought time for filing a rejoinder.

Subsequently, the hearing was adjourned till a date to be fixed by the registrar office.

Published in Dawn, March 31st, 2015

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