By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: The opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party was in open disarray on Thursday over whether it would proceed with a mass march on Islamabad this weekend, after one of its senior figures suggested the protest could be called off in exchange for concessions the party’s official spokesperson said were never on the table.
Naeem Haider Panjutha, a lawyer close to the leadership of Imran Khan’s PTI party, told the newspaper Dawn that the party would consider postponing Sunday’s march if the government gave three guarantees: that free and fair elections would be held within six to eight months, that Khan and other political prisoners would be released through the courts rather than a political deal, and that a judicial inquiry would be opened into crackdowns on the party in May 2023 and last November. “The first and primary condition is that the public mandate be respected,” Panjutha said, adding that he wanted assurance a poll would take place before the end of the current financial year. If the three demands were met, he said, “the march can be postponed” — but if ignored, PTI would proceed with “no compromise, no retreat, and no turning back”.
Within hours, the party’s official spokesperson, Sheikh Waqas Akram, moved to shut the offer down. He insisted no such proposal was being discussed at any level of the party and said only Khan himself, jailed since August 2023, had the authority to call off the march. Akram gave a different account of the party’s recent dealings with the government, saying similar conditions had in fact been raised after earlier clashes at Islamabad’s D-Chowk, but were withdrawn on Khan’s instructions once the government’s response was judged inadequate. “We have not received any concrete offer from the government side, so the long march will be held come what may,” he said. “Even if we get an offer, we will demand to arrange a meeting with Imran Khan, as only he can postpone it.” He added that the party could not credibly stand down now, not least because its own officeholders were, in his words, “being abducted”.
It was not clear where Panjutha’s proposal had originated, and the contradiction left PTI’s own position on Sunday’s march no clearer than it had been at the start of the week. A decision may come sooner than expected: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s chief minister, Sohail Afridi, was expected to address reporters in Peshawar on Thursday afternoon, with some PTI figures suggesting the party could yet defer the mobilisation to between 5 and 10 October.
The confusion played out against a week-long escalation that has turned Islamabad into what residents are already calling a fortress. Section 144, which bans gatherings of five or more people, has been in force across the capital since last week, backed by a newly passed Peaceful Assembly and Public Order Act carrying prison terms of up to three years for violations. More than 2,000 shipping containers now ring the city and block the Attock Bridge, the main crossing from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa into Punjab; the M-1 motorway to Peshawar has been shut at its toll plaza, with sections of the M-14 and N-5 also restricted. On Thursday the federal government authorised the deployment of paramilitary Rangers across Islamabad and several Punjab districts until 5 October, with an interior ministry notification permitting troops to “respond appropriately in self-defence” to threats encountered on duty — language that has drawn scrutiny given that PTI says 20 of its supporters were killed when the party last attempted to reach the capital, in November 2024.
More than 1,500 party workers have been detained in the run-up to Sunday, PTI says, along with five sitting members of the National Assembly and a serving senator. Three of Khan’s sisters — Aleema Khan, Dr Uzma Khan and Noreen Niazi — were taken into custody in Lahore last weekend under a colonial-era public order ordinance allowing detention without charge for up to 30 days; their family has called the arrests an act of intimidation, and Aleema Khan’s lawyer says the detentions have been challenged in the Lahore High Court. Barrister Gohar Ali Khan, PTI’s interim chairman, has separately alleged that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa — the province his party governs — is now effectively under central control in all but name, and the interior minister, Mohsin Naqvi, has confirmed the government is weighing the imposition of governor’s rule there, though he says the final call rests with the prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif.
The standoff has already inflicted commercial damage well beyond politics. Transporters say roughly 2,000 freight vehicles have been impounded in and around Islamabad, some held since early September, tying up cargo they estimate to be worth billions of rupees. “This is not only a loss for our transporters, but this is the loss for the economy, this is a loss for traders and this is a loss for the common man,” said Muhammad Owais Chaudhry, president of the All Pakistan Goods Transport Owners Association, who rejected government assurances that seized vehicles would be compensated. A senior government official, speaking anonymously, disputed the transporters’ account, insisting the containers used as barricades were empty and that “major motorways and highways are open”.
The government has also moved to stop PTI clearing the barricades itself, after the party used cranes to shift containers during its previous march in November 2024. Information minister Attaullah Tarar warned on Thursday that any contractor supplying protesters with machinery would face fines and prosecution, while an Islamabad High Court order last week directed provincial governments not to let public resources be used to facilitate the march — an order that applies directly to PTI’s own administration in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Khan, 73, denies the charges against him, which range from corruption to terrorism-related offences tied to protests by his supporters; his party says the prosecutions are politically motivated, and the government denies interfering in the courts. Sunday’s would be PTI’s fifth attempt to march on the capital since the current government took office — a pattern that has twice before ended in mass arrests and, in November’s case, bloodshed. This time, with the party’s own leadership divided over whether to go at all, even that outcome is no longer certain.
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