Punjab Seeks Mobile and Internet Shutdown Ahead of PTI's March

Update, October 12, 2026: PTI postponed the march from September 27 to October 4, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Sohail Afridi announced on September 25. Afridi launched the march from Lakki Marwat on October 4. The report below describes the situation before the postponement.

Punjab's Home Department has asked the federal government to suspend or downgrade mobile phone and internet service in specific parts of Rawalpindi and Attock from September 27, the day of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf's planned march on Islamabad — a step that goes beyond the highway blockades and paramilitary deployment the province had already put in place this week.

What's actually being requested

According to the request sent to the Ministry of Interior, Punjab wants mobile and internet service suspended, and 2G, 3G and 4G signals jammed at selected points, in named parts of Rawalpindi — including Bahtar, Taxila, Wah Saddar and Chakri — along with specific routes and bridges across Attock district. The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority said it had received no formal order, and that the final decision rests with the Ministry of Interior. Unlike a blanket nationwide shutdown, this request targets specific towns and transit corridors that sit along the routes protesters would likely use to reach Islamabad from the west and northwest.

Part of a broader security build-out this week

The request follows Punjab's province-wide Section 144 order and its formal call for Pakistan Rangers deployment in four districts, announced days earlier, and comes on top of the shipping-container highway blockades and mass security deployment the federal government had already ordered after PTI called for the march to demand Imran Khan's release. Police sources have said Islamabad has requested roughly 16,000 personnel from Punjab Police and 2,000 from Sindh Police to reinforce the capital's own force for the march, on top of the Rangers and highway measures already reported.

Not the first time this tool has been used

Network suspensions during PTI mobilizations have become close to a pattern rather than an exception. Pakistan shut down mobile broadband nationally during the violent protests that followed Imran Khan's arrest in May 2023. Mobile internet was suspended again on election day in February 2024, and access to X (formerly Twitter) was blocked for over a year, from February 2024 until May 2025. Digital rights researchers who track these episodes have consistently pointed to one legal provision behind nearly all of them.

The legal basis is a 1996 telecom law

Requests of this kind are typically made under Section 54 of the Pakistan Telecommunication (Re-organization) Act 1996, which empowers the federal government to suspend telecommunications services in the interest of national security or in the event of a public emergency. Digital rights groups, including Freedom House in its annual assessments of Pakistan's internet freedom, have argued the provision was drafted for genuine emergencies but has instead become a routine tool deployed ahead of scheduled political events — protests, elections and religious occasions — rather than in response to an unforeseen crisis.

What's at stake beyond the march itself

Targeted shutdowns carry costs that extend past the protesters they're aimed at disrupting. Residents in the named areas would lose the ability to make mobile calls, use ride-hailing and delivery apps, process digital payments, or reach emergency services through normal channels for the duration of the suspension — a burden that falls on everyone living or working in Taxila or Wah Saddar regardless of whether they have any connection to the march. Businesses reliant on card payments or online orders absorb the same disruption. Whether the government's public-safety rationale — intelligence on possible attacks that also underpins this week's Section 144 order — justifies suspending an entire district's connectivity for two days is precisely the trade-off digital rights advocates say Section 54 was never meant to be used to make routine.

Build Better Pakistan's Justice Desk tracks digital rights and civil-liberties developments as part of our ongoing coverage.