The White House has shut down a petition seeking to declare Pakistan a state sponsor of terror after it found that it did not meet signature requirements.
The petition can no longer be signed, a White House statement said.
“This petition has been archived because it did not meet the signature requirements. It can no longer be signed,” a statement on the page said.
Launched on September 21, the petition started gathering signatures in surprisingly high numbers, by hundreds of thousands in a few weeks. Before the petition was shut down, it had garnered more than 600,000 signatures.
It is not clear how many of the signatures did not meet the required standards.
The mainstream Indian had been regularly updating news stories about the petition since its launch last month.
Pakistan and India are currently locked in a tense standoff over violence in the disputed Kashmir region.
On Tuesday, a report in The Hindustan Times cited an unnamed official as saying that there were “some technical issues with some of the signatures” that needed to be looked into. According to the Times report, some of the signatures “could potentially be removed if there is evidence of fraud” consistent with the terms of participation, the official added.
Here is the publicly available announcement:
A petition filed by Pakistani Americans to declare India a state terror perpetrator inside Pakistan, meanwhile, remains on track. By Tuesday afternoon, it had gathered around 71,000 signatures.
According to White House rules for “We the people” petitions, a petition must have at least 100,000 signatures within 30 days for the U.S. officials to formally respond to it.
The White House says the “right to petition your government is guaranteed by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution” but it clearly lays out rules and requirements for the process.
The White House, the website clearly says, may disable user accounts, remove associated signatures and remove petitions created or signed by users that it has reasonable belief do not satisfy the rules.
“The White House may block access from IP addresses that it has reasonable belief are using automated systems or bulk processes to create multiple user accounts or petition signatures. The White House may also block submission of disposable or time bound signatures.”
