Claim: A notification from the Ministry of Interior, dated 8 August 2026, announced the transfer of Abbottabad’s jurisdiction to Islamabad Capital Territory.
Fact: Ministry of Information and Broadcasting debunked the notification as fake. Further, news reports state the KP assembly adopted a unanimous resolution rejecting the inclusion of Haripur and Abbottabad in the federal capital of Islamabad.
On 9 August 2026, a Facebook account named Voice of Nawanshahr shared a notification with the header of ‘Government of Pakistan’. The document, dated 8 August 2026, announced the transfer of Abbottabad’s existing jurisdiction to “Islamabad Capital Territory under the Government of Islamabad.”
The caption of the viral post reads:
“ایبٹ آباد کا الحاق اسلام آباد کے ساتھ مبارک ہو، نوٹیفکیشن جاری، اب فیصلہ عوام کا۔”
[Translation: “Congratulations on the merger of Abbottabad with Islamabad; the notification has been issued, and the decision now rests with the public.”]
The claim went viral after Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi said the current system of governance has “collapsed” during the Pakistan Economic Summit 2026 where he also emphasised on the creation of more administrative units.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check first conducted a keyword search of “Abbottabad transferred to Islamabad’s jurisdiction” to see if any credible publications reported on the development. It led to two articles by The News and The Express Tribune titled “KP Assembly rejects any move to include Haripur, Abbottabad in Islamabad” and “Haripur, Abbottabad annexation rejected”, respectively.
Both articles reported on the KP assembly adopting a unanimous resolution rejecting the inclusion of Haripur and Abbottabad in the federal capital of Islamabad. Since the reports detailed the opposite of the document under investigation, Soch Fact Check conducted a reverse-image-search to trace the original source of the notification.
The search led to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting’s fact-checking account on X called Fact Checker MoIB. On 9 August, the account shared the document with a red stamp of ‘FAKE’ and wrote in the caption, “FAKE ALERT This notification circulating on social media is fabricated. Please verify official documents before sharing. Professional formatting, signatures and QR codes can easily be manipulated in the age of AI. Pause. Verify. Then share.”
The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting’s fact-checking account on X debunked the notification as fake on 9 August 2026.
As the MoIB mentioned AI, Soch Fact Check ran the text of the document through a few AI detection tools. AI or Not, which is developed by Bioptic, an American tech company founded by former Google product director Andrey Doronichev, gave the excerpt a rating of 97%, concluding it “likely contains AI.”
Results by AI or Not.
We also ran the text through an online writing platform named Humalingo that helps humanise AI-written text. It is run by a company based in Lithuania called KrivisAI. It gave the text a score of 95% AI and 5% human.
Result by Humalingo.
Credible reporting on the development rejecting the transfer, MoIB’s X post, and strong results by AI tools confirms that the notification about Abbottabad transferring to ICT is fake.
Virality
Soch Fact Check first came across a viral post on Facebook with as many as 589 likes and 140 shares. It was further shared by several other accounts on the platform where it received 91 likes and 73 likes via separate posts.
Conclusion: The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting’s post on X debunked the notification announcing the transfer of Abbottabad from KPK’s territory to Islamabad Capital Territory as fake. The text of the notification may be AI-generated.
To appeal against our fact-check, please send an email to appeals@sochfactcheck.com