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The Pakistan government’s highly anticipated Laptop Scheme 2025 has sparked discussion not only for its promises to students but also for its puzzling inaccessibility outside Pakistan. While both the Prime Minister’s Youth Laptop Scheme and the Punjab Chief Minister’s Laptop Scheme are underway, many overseas users and researchers have found themselves unable to access the official portal, raising questions about transparency, accessibility, and digital infrastructure.
Scheme Overview: A Push for Digital Empowerment
The Prime Minister’s Youth Laptop Scheme 2025 is part of the federal government’s efforts to distribute 100,000 laptops to students enrolled in public universities across Pakistan. Similarly, the Punjab Government’s CM Laptop Scheme, launched in March 2025, plans to distribute 40,000 laptops on a merit basis to deserving students in provincial institutions.
Applications for these schemes were open until May 20, 2025, with thousands of students applying through the official online portal. However, an unexpected roadblock emerged: the site was inaccessible from outside the country.
Geo-Blocking: Is It on Purpose?
Several IT experts and users have noticed that the laptop scheme’s portal appears to be inaccessible from non-Pakistani IP addresses. This is not due to a server outage or misconfiguration but seems to be a deliberate geo-blocking policy enforced through DNS and firewall-level restrictions.
Technical Breakdown:
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DNS Hosting: The scheme’s domain is routed through RapidCompute, a Pakistani cloud hosting provider widely used by local businesses and government entities.
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Server Hosting: The portal is reportedly hosted on Microsoft Azure Cloud, likely on infrastructure designated for local or regional usage.
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Access Limits: Tests conducted on multiple Pakistani ISPs (such as PTCL, StormFiber, and Zong) show the portal loading normally, while international users face DNS resolution failures or blank pages.
This strongly indicates that the portal is intentionally restricted to Pakistani IP ranges, a practice not uncommon in regional government services, especially to prevent data scraping, bot registrations, or abuse by non-eligible applicants. It’s important to note that even within Pakistan, access is inconsistent. The portal loads successfully on some local networks, but users on other networks have reported issues with slow loading or total inaccessibility.
However, the government has not issued any official clarification on this policy.
Transparency Concerns
The fact that the portal is inaccessible globally also raises transparency concerns. For students applying from overseas, IT professionals, and independent observers trying to audit the process, this restriction acts as a digital wall, limiting oversight and information flow.
By hosting the platform through local DNS providers and geo-restricting its availability, the government may inadvertently appear to be avoiding scrutiny, despite the likelihood that the move was motivated by technical or administrative concerns.
