We Tested Pakistan's Government Websites. Some Do Not Exist.

Over four days we opened around forty Pakistani official websites, one at a time, and wrote down what came back.

We were doing it to check facts for other articles. What we found was interesting enough to publish on its own, because some of what the internet tells you about these sites is simply wrong.

One thing first, so this article does not mislead you

A website that refuses an automated request is not a broken website.

NADRA, the Bureau of Emigration and PTA's complaint portal all block automated visitors. They work perfectly well in a normal browser on a normal phone. We are not listing them as down, and if a page tells you NADRA is offline because a tool could not reach it, that page is wrong.

What follows separates three different things: domains that do not exist, sites that work but are wrongly described elsewhere, and sites that simply block robots.

The findings that will actually save you time

The Punjab vehicle portal everyone links to does not exist. Guides, forum posts and forwarded messages across Pakistan tell you to check your car registration at mtmis.punjab.gov.pk. That domain does not resolve. The working service is at mtmis.excise.punjab.gov.pk, and we found it by going to the Excise department's own site and following the link.

A lookalike outranks the real regulator. Search for petrol or LPG prices and you will land on ogra.com.pk near the top. That is not the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority. The regulator is ogra.org.pk. One is an official body publishing notifications; the other is not, and is under no obligation to be accurate.

EOBI is not dead, it is misconfigured. The pension body's site fails over the secure address and answers normally over plain http. That single quirk is very likely why guides have described it as unreachable for years. The pension rates, contribution shares and retirement ages are all sitting there.

NDMA is up but its advisories were stale. The site loads fine. When we checked during a week of flooding, the most recent posted advisory was almost two weeks old, well behind the closures that followed. It is a weather and disaster authority, not a live road feed, and it should not be relied on as one.

What worked

Most of it, which is worth saying because the reputation is worse than the reality.

NEPRA in particular publishes its actual statutory instruments as downloadable documents, which is why we were able to quote the solar regulations from the regulation itself rather than from reporting.

What did not resolve at all

These domains returned nothing. Not an error page, no server: the address does not exist.

• mtmis.punjab.gov.pk, the vehicle portal everyone recommends
• sehatsahulat.gov.pk and sehatcard.gov.pk
• hajj.gov.pk, where the real one is hajj.mora.gov.pk
• zakat.gop.pk
• wasa.lhr.gop.pk and lda.gop.pk

Note the pattern in two of those: .gop.pk rather than .gov.pk. Some Punjab bodies have used that form historically, and links to it are now scattered everywhere in a broken state.

How to tell a real government site from a lookalike

1. Federal bodies end in .gov.pk. Provincial ones are often .punjab.gov.pk, or .gos.pk for Sindh.
2. Be suspicious of a .com or a bare .pk using a department's name. Some are honest information sites. Some are not, and none of them are the department.
3. Never enter card details for a service that is free. Checking a vehicle record, a BISP payment or a filer status costs nothing. A site asking for payment for those is not the government.
4. Reach the service from the department's homepage rather than from a search result. That single habit is how we found the working MTMIS address.
5. Treat a remembered address as a guess. Links rot faster than institutions do.

If an official site will not load

Before concluding the service is gone, work through these. Two of them fixed problems for us.

1. Try plain http instead of https. This is what unlocked EOBI.
2. Try with and without www.
3. Go via the parent department and follow their link.
4. Check .gov.pk against .gop.pk if it is a Punjab body.
5. Assume your address is wrong before assuming the department has vanished.

What this is, and is not

This is a snapshot. One machine, four days in August 2026, automated requests. It is not an uptime audit, and a site that was up when we checked can be down when you try.

What it does establish is that several widely repeated addresses are wrong, one lookalike is outranking a real regulator, and at least one important service has been written off because of a certificate problem rather than because it stopped working.

Where these findings changed our own guides, we fixed them. The corrected vehicle portal is in the guide to checking car registration in Punjab, and the regulator warning is in the guide to LPG cylinder prices.

Questions readers are asking

What is the correct MTMIS website for Punjab?

mtmis.excise.punjab.gov.pk. The commonly linked mtmis.punjab.gov.pk does not resolve.

Is ogra.com.pk the official OGRA website?

No. The Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority is at ogra.org.pk. The lookalike ranks highly on price searches.

Why does the EOBI website not open?

Its secure address fails, but the plain http address works. Try http://www.eobi.gov.pk if https gives you an error.

A tool says a government site is down. Is it?

Not necessarily. NADRA, BEOE and PTA's complaint portal block automated requests while working normally in a browser. Blocked is not the same as broken.

How do I know a government website is genuine?

Look for .gov.pk, or the provincial equivalent, reach it from the department's own homepage rather than a search result, and never pay for a service that is free.

Why do so many official links not work?

Departments move services between domains, some Punjab bodies used .gop.pk historically, and old links keep circulating long after the address changes.