Pakistan’s Minister of State for IT and Telecommunication has moved to clarify who actually pulls the trigger on mobile internet shutdowns and says no order has landed yet ahead of Saturday’s planned PTI march.

Shaza Fatima Khawaja said the PTA internet shutdown decision is made in the direction of the Ministry of Interior, not by the telecom regulator on its own. She added that the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has not received any request from the Interior Ministry so far.

Who decides, and who has not asked yet?

According to the minister, PTA acts only when the Interior Ministry formally directs it. That distinction matters, since public criticism after past shutdowns has often been aimed at PTA directly.

As of her statement, no such direction had reached the regulator. That leaves open whether one will arrive before September 27, when the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) has called a march towards Islamabad demanding the release of its founder, Imran Khan.

A conditional promise of limits

Khawaja said that if an internet shutdown becomes necessary during the long march, it would be limited. She did not define what “limited” would mean in practice, whether by area, duration, network type or all three.

That leaves the same gap seen in past restrictions: an assurance of proportionality without the details that would let people plan around it.

Why this statement follows other reports

The minister’s comments arrive days after separate reports said Punjab’s Home Department had written to the federal government seeking network restrictions in parts of Rawalpindi and Attock from September 27, tied to the same march.

Khawaja’s statement, read narrowly, does not necessarily contradict those reports. A provincial home department writing to the Ministry of Interior is a different channel from the Interior Ministry directing PTA. But it does raise a question worth tracking: if the Punjab request exists, has it reached the stage of an Interior Ministry direction to PTA, or is it still sitting short of that step?

The pattern behind the caution

Pakistan has restricted mobile networks around past PTI protests, including after Khan’s 2023 arrest. Those shutdowns drew criticism over the economic cost to freelancers, ride-hailing and delivery platforms, and small businesses that depend on mobile data.

Government officials have previously said such decisions rest with the Interior Ministry rather than PTA, and the regulator has at times said the same when asked to explain a suspension. Khawaja’s statement fits that established line, restated ahead of a specific event rather than after one.

A promise that restrictions will be “limited” is easy to make and hard to verify after the fact, unless it comes with a defined scope in advance. The more useful step would be for PTA or the Interior Ministry to publish the criteria before a decision is needed, rather than after.

Naming the decision-making chain, as the minister has done here, is a small step toward accountability. The next one is to publish what limits actually mean so the public and businesses are not left to find out only once service is already down.