New York: As per certain media reports, [t]he White House officials have removed India’s petition to declare Pakistan ‘a terrorism sponsoring state’ after they said that fake signatures were used to reach the minimum required support for the petition.
The petitions page of the White House website says that Indian petition has been Closed and no one can sign the petition now.
“Closed Petition: This petition has been archived because it did not meet the signature requirements. It can no longer be signed”, reads the full message displayed on the website of the White House.
Notably, Signature counts on the petition shows that 642,541 signatures were counted on the petition where as the goal was only 100,000.
It is pertinent to mention here that Indian Media had proactively campaigned for securing signatures on this petition. Zee News published a news on it’s website which carried a message prompting people to sign the petition. The message reproduced by the Zee News maintained inter alia that “Not just people in the USA. Anybody anywhere can sign it (the said petition)”. [Words in Bracket is from Sikh Siyasat News].
The petition has been archived as it did not meet the signature requirements under the laws of the United States and can no longer be signed, the White House statement said.
On September 21, the petition was filed by a person who used initials RG. It needed minimum 1,00,000 signatures in 30 days (till October 20) to get an official response from the White House.
The petition became very popular among Indian citizens and obtained over half a million signatures during first ten days alone. But, according to media reports, later it was considered by the White House that the signatures were not genuine.