PTI officials have alleged that a fake web portal, imitating one launched to provide information on party backed candidates contesting the polls has been created and was providing ‘incorrect’ information to voters, on Wednesday.

The claim is true, since the website in question pticandidate.com, provides candidate information that is not corroborated by the official list issued by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), or the party’s records.

According to fact-checking platform iVerify Pakistan, PTI activist Azhar Mashwani took to his X (formerly Twitter) to announce that the party’s official web portal for obtaining information on candidates was pticandidates.com.

“A couple of people are trying to spread misinformation by creating a website with a similar name,” he wrote, pointing out that the authentic website has the word ‘candidates’ in it.

The party had relaunched its web portal for voters looking to get information on PTI-backed independent candidates on Tuesday. The announcement was made through PTI’s official handle on X.

“Write your national or provincial assembly constituency: The name of the candidate, his election symbol, and his WhatsApp channel will appear in front of you,” the post read.

However, according to the initial investigation carried out by the iVerify platform, the official website was not working as of 1:10pm on Thursday. The platform then investigated the alleged fake portal to cross-check if the information provided was corroborated by the ECP’s official candidates lists issued on Sunday, the PTI’s official list of candidates contesting on National Assembly seats or information provided on founding party chief Imran Khan’s official Facebook account.

The platform searched for Karachi’s NA-241 constituency, and yielded Khurram Sher Zaman with symbol of ‘dhol’ (drum) on both the allegedly fake web portal as well as Mr Khan’s official Facebook account.

The same candidate was present in the ECP’s official list. However, further searches showed discrepancies between the information provided by the allegedly fake website, Mr Khan’s official Facebook pages, the ECP lists and PTIs official candidate list.

The ‘fake’ website showed Nadeem Altaf Khan with the electoral symbol ‘cricket stumps’ as the PTI-backed candidate for Lahore’s NA-119. But Mr Khan’s official Facebook page showed Shahzad Farooq as the candidate for the constituency with the symbol ‘tricycle’. His candidacy was further verified by ECP’s official list.

Similarly, the website showed Talha Anees as a candidate from NA-57, Narowal with electoral symbol ‘charpai’, but the Facebook page showed Dr Tahir Ali Javed with the same symbol, which was further verified by ECP’s list. Additionally, the website showed Haji Imtiaz from NA-68, Mandi Bahauddin with electoral symbol ‘cricket stumps’ however his symbol is ‘aeroplane’ as per information provided on Facebook page and ECP list.

Searching for Lahore’s NA-123 constituency showed Tazeem Azeem Pahat with the symbol ‘laptop’ from the website, while the Facebook page showed the same candidate with the symbol ‘radio’. The ECP list showed both as independent candidates with the symbols ‘laptop’ and ‘radio’ respectively. The iVerify team cross-checked the PTI’s official list of affiliated candidates for NA which showed Mr Afzaal as the candidate for NA-123.

As per further investigation by the platform, the allegedly fake portal not only showed different candidates from those mentioned in the ECP and PTI lists, but also showed repetition of electoral symbols. Hence, the iVerify platform concluded that the examination of a number of constituencies between all the various sources showcased that the PTI’s allegation is true.

This fact check has been published in partnership with iVerify Pakistan — a project of CEJ and UNDP

Published in Dawn, January 26th, 2024