LAHORE, May 13: The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) has urged the acting chief justice of Pakistan to take action against the Rangers and other law-enforcing agencies for their failure to protect people who were killed in Karachi on Saturday.

The party has also appealed to the people of Punjab to strike today (Monday) to express solidarity with the people of Karachi.

PML-N frontline leaders said this at a news conference at Lahore Press Club on Sunday.

PML-N provincial president Zulfiqar Khosa said Gen Musharraf ridiculed himself by alleging that Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry was politicising a legal and constitutional issue. Such assertion, he said, became a joke when made by a person who was the army chief but addressing political rallies and asking people to vote for his supporters.

He said the CJP had visited a number of cities in Punjab and the NWFP where he was accorded warm welcome by lawyers. He said during his visits, no property was damaged, which showed people were law-abiding.

He alleged that the rulers were pushing the opposition to the wall. Although nobody would like confrontation, a reaction by the relatives of those who had been killed was quite natural.

He said people thought that the government was trying to create a situation that could justify the imposition of emergency rule.

He alleged that billions of rupees had been spent on the rally addressed by Gen Musharraf in Islamabad on Saturday. He said the PML-N would recover all the money from the nazims misspending it.

MNA Saad Rafiq said the opposition would protest in the National Assembly on Monday against the Karachi killings.

He said it was regrettable that at a time when people were being killed, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement and the rulers in Islamabad were celebrating their “achievements”.

Mr Rafiq said his party leaders would visit the relatives of all the “victims” and sympathise with them. He said the government was trying to find a justification to impose emergency and extend the term of the assemblies by a year. But, he said, the conspiracy would not succeed.

The PML leaders condemned the attack on a private TV channel in Karachi.

MNAs Pervaiz Malik, Sardar Ayyaz Sadiq, MPAs Mehr Ishtiaq, Dr Asad Ashraf, Afzal Khokhar and Mujtaba Shujaa were present.