PML-N alleges PTI lying about electoral rigging

Rating Justification

The iVerify Pakistan team has checked this content and has established that it is false.

To arrive at this verdict, the iVerify Pakistan team has checked the official account of PML-N and digital media platform Siasat.pk.

HOW IT STARTED

On February 19, 2024, a link to a news report was posted by PML-N on social media platform X that, “The movie is the same old lie, just an unsuccessful attempt to sell lies again through a popular YouTuber by changing the characters.”

The X post it had reshared in turn had the caption: “NA 122: Imran Khan’s rigged position has been proven correct, ballot papers printed by Urdu Bazaar have also been recovered.”

The PML-N post said that the PTI was claiming rigging in the Feb 8 general elections similar to the party’s previous rigging allegations.

The PML-N post gained over 293,000 views and 1,100 reshares.

METHODOLOGY

The iVerify Pakistan team sought to determine the veracity of the claim as numerous videos and claims are circulating on social media platforms alleging rigging in several constituencies during the February 8 polls. Furthermore, many users responded to the PML-N’s post that the link it had shared was not from a genuine website.

To investigate the claim, the iVerify Pakistan team examined the link shared by the PML-N.

According to the team’s observation and identification by social media users, the account posing as the X account digital media platform Siasat.pk lacks any background on its front page, whereas the original page has one.

Furthermore, the X handle of the impostor account is spelt siasat_pk, whereas the original X handle is siasatpk.

The bio of the impostor account reads, “Pakistani Politics, News & Updates,” while the original one says, “Pakistan’s biggest digital media platform – Discussion forum & News blogs.”

Moreover, the team discovered that the original X account of Siasat.pk was created in June 2009 and currently has 2.6 million followers. In contrast, the fake account was created in May 2013 and has only 1,486 followers.

While the original X account of Siasat.pk mentions the location Pakistan in its bio and the website link as siasat.pk, the fraudulent account does not mention any location, and the link goes by siasat-pk.com.

Opening siasat-pk.com also leads to a softcore pornography website.

In addition to verifying the claim, the team also traced a clarification in an X post from the original account of Siasat.pk.

In the caption, the digital media platform wrote, “The PML-N official account is quoting the fake Siasatpk Twitter handle. The account they quoted has very few followers and is clearly fake. You need to dismiss the person managing this official account, as they can’t even distinguish basic facts”.

CONCLUSION

The iVerify Pakistan team has determined that the claim posted by the PML-N’s X account is false.

The team concluded that the account posing as the digital media platform Siasat.pk was an impostor when compared with the original account.

Furthermore, the official X account of Siasat.pk also confirmed that the PML-N official account quoted an impostor handle.

Evidence and References

February 19, 2024 X post of Siasat.pk:
https://twitter.com/siasatpk/status/1759336742102987252?s=20