Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s jalsa’ was held on March 27 at the Parade Ground in Islamabad as the opposition geared up to remove the PM from his office via a no-confidence motion. The very first thing that the media speculates is that how many people were present at the location of the rally.
Several Pakistani digital news platforms have stated that “more than 0.6 million unique mobile devices were detected in Islamabad on Sunday, as per the data traffic analysis shared by Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA)”, which means that they are suggesting that more than six lakh people were present at the PTI rally.
It is pertinent to mention that PTA or any authentic personnel have not officially released any statement regarding this. In fact, a number of netizens have commented that the ones who are claiming the presence of 0.6 million people at the Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan’s march do not have the authentic source of information.
The crowd was reportedly estimated by Islamabad police to be between 60,000 – 70,000 people, while the Intelligence Bureau (IB) said it was only 26,000 people.
Independent sources claim that not more than 35,000 people attended the rally, and some suggest that the crowd was not even close to 100,000 people.
But the question remains: Can you determine a jalsa turnout through the number of mobile phones in the area?
Whenever a cell phone is used, it emits an electromagnetic radio wave, called a radio frequency, which is received by the nearest cell tower’s antenna. Once the cell tower receives this signal, it will transmit the signals to a switching center.
Also, the cellular towers have limitations to accommodate a certain number of phones, this might allow the network provider to determine the devices connected to it.
