Official YouTube channel of Prime Minister of Pakistan renamed to 'Imran Khan'

With the National Assembly set to vote on a no-confidence motion against Prime Minister Imran Khan, the YouTube channel of the premier's office has been renamed to "Imran Khan."

The channel that had a verified tick when it was named Prime Minister's Office no longer has that after the name change.

According to YouTube's rules, the verified tick of a channel is changed after it is renamed.

The channel has speeches of the premier and all the activities he has been carrying out since as PM. However, it was created a year after the PM was elected to office.

Geo.tv reached out to the General Manager of the Digital Media Wing of the Government of Pakistan, Imran Ghazali, to comment on the development.

Ghazali said that the wing "only manages" the Twitter and Facebook accounts of the Prime Minister's office and distanced his department from the YouTube channel.

“PTI’s social media manages [the YouTube channel]. We only have Twitter and Facebook accounts. The YouTube channel was created before the Digital Media Wing,” said Ghazali. He clarified that the wing was established in 2020 and the channel was created before the establishment of the wing.

The "about" section of the channel shows that it was created in 2019 but if it is being handled by the social media team of the ruling party, then it does raise a question as to why party activists were running an official account of the country's top-most office.

Focal Person to Prime Minister Imran Khan on Digital Media Dr Arslan Khalid told Independent Urdu that he spoke to PTI’s social media head Jibran Ilyas and he informed him that he has only changed the name of the channel, not the URL.

Geo.tv has reached out to the social media team of the PTI and is yet to receive a reply from them.

Dr Khalid told the publication that he has directed Ilyas to reinstate the name of the channel.

The name change is an eyebrow-raising move as the Opposition has submitted a no-confidence motion against PM Imran Khan in Parliament.

The motion was submitted on March 8 after the PPP's long march arrived in Islamabad.

The Opposition is confident that its motion would be successful as many PTI lawmakers have come out in the open against PM Imran Khan.

For a no-confidence motion to be successful at least 172 lawmakers have to vote in favour of it.

The National Assembly met today but the session was adjourned till March 28 by Speaker Asad Qaiser almost immediately after it started with the recitation of the Holy Quran.