Following the instructions of the party’s founder, Imran Khan, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) supporters attempted to stage demonstrations in several cities, including Karachi, Lahore, and Peshawar. However, they encountered a police crackdown, which led to many arrests, According to News.
Details indicate that during police raids in Jatli nearby of Rawalpindi, at least ten PTI workers were taken into custody.
PTI activists staged a rally in the NA-56 constituency of Rawalpindi, which culminated on Saeedpur Road amid heavy security. Protesters held up PTI flags and posters of Imran Khan while yelling opposed to the government slogans.
In Peshawar, a similar incident occurred when police on Ring Road broke up a protest. PTI employees and police got into a fight that led to multiple arrests.
PTI activists were not permitted to hold the rally, according to the police, and anyone caught on the road without a No Objection Certificate (NOC) would be taken into custody.
At a PTI rally in Karachi’s Clifton area, around fifty people were detained by the police.
A lot of people attended a rally in NA-119 Lahore that was organized by candidate Mian Shahzad Farooq, who is backed by the PTI.
Multiple videos presented a significant number of people showing up in support of the party in another post on PTI’s Lahore social media platform, X. “Everywhere you look, there are rallies. On February 8, no one will be able to stop the assailant Nawaz despite police brutality,” a tweet read.
Former federal minister and PTI a politician Hammad Azhar claimed earlier in the day that his father, the late Mian Azhar, the former governor of Punjab, had been “arrested” by the police before an electoral rally.
In a post on the social media platform X, Hammad stated that his father, who is eighty-two years old and an independent candidate for the NA-129 constituency with PTI’s support, was going to “exercise his democratic and constitutional right by leading a rally”.
“Today, Pakistan has been reduced to a completely fascist system with little regard for the rule of law or human rights. The nation is being ruined by one Nawaz Sharif and his daughter, who are in charge.”
Imran Khan, the founder of the PTI, gave the order earlier this week for all of the party’s candidates to take part in a power show today in Lahore for the national and provincial assemblies.
PTI announced that it would hold nationwide public rallies in anticipation of the general elections on February 8.
The party has major challenges as the elections draw near because of what looks to be an increase in the state apparatus’s authoritarian acts, particularly in Punjab, the largest province in the entire nation.
Due to a lack of equal opportunities, PTI has taken a creative stance and is running its election campaign on the internet and through social media.
In the aftermath of a failed legal struggle to preserve its iconic electoral emblem, the “bat,” the party has successively developed websites to help voters identify candidates supported by the PTI and their various symbols.
This is the PTI’s first major national power protest since the May 9 protests.
May 9 events
Following the events of May 9, when protesters allegedly associated with the PTI vandalized public and state properties and even attacked the General Headquarters in Rawalpindi and Jinnah House, the corps commander’s residence in Lahore, the party found itself in hot water. This was an unprecedented display of vandalism.
The attacks occurred hours after the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) authorized the paramilitary Rangers to arrest the PTI head from the grounds of the Islamabad High Court in the Al-Qadir Trust corruption inquiry, which was later dubbed the £190 million scandal.
A brutal crackdown against the activists and leaders of the former ruling party followed after the rioting.
