Social media became the cause of yet another controversial and amusing set of events. On April 25th, West Indies Captain, Darren Sammy was awarded Pakistani citizenship which was ‘revoked’ within one hour the initial announcement.
All of this started when the CEO of Haier, Javed Afridi, who is also the owner of PSL franchise, asked the government to offer Darren Sammy an honorary citizenship. Darren Sammy was a key player in his side and recently led his international team to World T20 victory.
It wasn’t long before Pervez Khattak’s Twitter account was claimed to accept Javed Afridi’s request.
Darren Sammy was quick to reply as well. He thanked Javed Afridi for teaching him Pashto and called himself a Pakhtoon Zalmi.
Minutes later, he thanked CM KPK, Pervez Khattak for the honorary Pakistani citizenship in Pashto. He seemed happy to receive such an award.
Peshawar Zalmi’s official account wasn’t far behind to thank CM KPK.
Soon after, Pakistani media outlets, including TV channels started reporting that Chief Minister, Pervez Khattak has bestowed the honour of Pakistani citizenship unto Darren Sammy, the West Indies captian.
Daily Pakistan was one of the fooled media outlets.
Several news channels started reporting that Darren Sammy was to receive honorary citizenship thanks to CM KPK. Breaking News were telecasted on most of the leading news channels. However, as soon as the news went viral, CM KPK’s Information Advisor cleared the air.
PTI KP tweeted that there is no such option being considered and that all rumors are false.
NO option is considered to forward Darren Sammy name for the Citizenship of Pakistan by GoKP
All Rumors & Reports are False & Baseless
— PTI KP (Official) (@PTIKPOFFICIAL) April 26, 2016
Officials from the KPK government informed that the tweet was made through a fake account. They also directed their followers to the real account.
Kindly avoid all the FAKE accounts of CM KP
The only Genuine account => @PervezKhattakCM
— PTI KP (Official) (@PTIKPOFFICIAL) April 26, 2016
The official statement said that even if the account had been legitimate, the CM did not have the authority to grant an honorary citizenship. The right resides with the federal government of Pakistan. If such an honor was being conferred, it would not have been through social media, the statement added.
One amusing fact to note here is that the fake account has 196K followers at the time of writing. While the real one has only 30.7K followers.
its embarrassing rather than amusing.,.,
Agree Brother… Furthermore some of our friends keep sharing such news on FB…. co’z they think everything is true from such sources like Daily Pakistan, Javed Chaudhry Website AKA blog, Urdupoint dot com… they all are fake and just want hits on their pages.
the best thing is that out f******g stupid media that never confirm from reliable sources and publish the news as breaking news just to make TRP
Shame on all the media managers who are assumed to be well educated persons.
GO FARHAN VIRK GO…..
He hasn’t jumped yet?
For God sake someone ban these urdu suspense news on facebook… click to open “Pakistan superpower ban gaya” dekhnay kay leye link par click karien…. what a rubbish thing… my facebook is flooded with such sort of things even i didnt like or follow anything like this.
Really tired of these ARY and Dunya groups etc…
This is a common tactis used not only by urdu news channel but many others too.. As it gets them more views
Yeh tou lol hogaya.☺
The real stupid face of media who shout over each and every news rather than verifying the authenticity of news… A slap over them who believe over media and social media blindly.
being a common man I even after reading the tweet of fake account and even before official negation, tweet that this is not in a CM’s jurisdiction to give citizenship. Its totally in the power of federal interior ministry. How can these dumb head media outlets don’t know this common sense thing?