Lahore High Court (LHC) Justice Mansoor Ali Shah has referred YouTube ban case to a larger bench, led by the chief justice, for a hearing.
The website was blocked on the orders of former prime minister Raja Pervez Ashraf about a year ago. Since then various segments of the society have demanded the restoration of the website.
The former PM had imposed the ban after YouTube refused to remove blasphemous film The Innocence of the Muslims from its website.
The Lahore High Court had asked the minister and secretary of Information Technology to appear before the court in August in a petition challenging the ban.
The number of people who accessed the Innocence of Muslims clip on YouTube is a tiny fraction of the number who used it to access educational and Islamic content, the Lahore High Court was told last month as it heard a petition challenging the ban on the video-sharing website. The petitioner in the case at the LHC had argued that the ban is counter-productive as it limits access to a vital educational and research tool.
