ISLAMABAD: Chairman Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Imran Khan will lead an election rally in Punjab’s capital city Lahore today (Monday).
According to Imtiaz Shaikh, PTI Lahore Chapter President, the rally will be taken from Zaman Park to Data Darbar at 2 p.m. today while Imran Khan will lead it.
The Lahore district administration on late Sunday granted permission to the Imran Khan-led party to stage an election rally in the Punjab’s capital city after day-long tension between the party and the local administration amid imposition of section 144 of the PPC. The PTI leadership submitted an affidavit, assuring the city’s administration of its full cooperation with them, the police and the security officials. They also assured the concerned authorities that it would comply with the laws about the usage of the sound system. Speeches against the judiciary and state institutions will not be made, agreed the PTI also.
Earlier in the day, PTI chief Imran Khan, who was ousted from the government after losing a no-confidence vote on 9 April 2022, postponed his election rally after the caretaker government refused to lift Section 144 of the PPC.
Taking to Twitter, the PTI chief, earlier Sunday claimed that Section 144 was imposed “illegally solely on PTI election campaign” despite other public activities continuing in the city of Lahore. “Only Zaman Park has been surrounded by containers & heavy police contingent. Clearly, like 8 March, Punjab CM & police want to provoke clashes to file more sham FIRs against PTI leadership and workers and to use as a pretext for postponing elections,” the former prime minister added.
PTI chairman on section 144
The PTI chairman posed a question how Section 144 can be imposed in the provincial capital despite the announcement of the election schedule. “I AM TELLING ALL PTI WORKERS NOT TO FALL INTO THIS TRAP. Hence we have postponed rally till tomorrow,” the PTI chief said while announcing to postpone the rally on Sunday.
Today’s rally would be the first one that Khan would lead in more than four months as he was mobilising the party from his Zaman Park residence in Lahore through digital addresses. Imran Khan had been at home as he was “recovering” from an injury he sustained in Wazirabad last year. He was shot in the legs on November 3 last year as he waved to crowds from a truck-mounted container while leading a protest rally to Islamabad to pressure the government into announcing an early election.
It is to mention here that the general elections in the Punjab province are scheduled to be held on April 30, while the date for the polls in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa is yet to be announced by Governor Ghulam Ali who has not taken a decision in this regard yet.
