KARACHI: Workers and supporters of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) converged on Sharea Faisal on Saturday to stage a sit-in as part of their party’s plan to expand the ongoing anti-government campaign from Islamabad to major cities.

The participants, including women carrying toddlers, danced to the tunes of party songs and chanted slogans against the government demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

A large number of youngsters remained a prominent feature of the PTI’s sit-in. With party flags wrapped around their head, the youngsters reached the venue in cars, motorbikes and pickups from different city areas.

The situation forced police to block one track of the arterial Sharea Faisal near Nursery.

The closure of the track leading to Hotel Metropole from Karachi airport severely disrupted the vehicular traffic on Sharea Faisal, as vehicles were diverted to alternative routes.

Police authorities claimed that the PTI workers violated an understanding under which they were not to protest on the main road.

According to the understanding, the PTI workers should have restricted their protest to a service lane along Sharea Faisal near Nursery, said a senior official of the East zone of the police organisational structure.

“They [PTI leaders] were conveyed the message loud and clear but the fact is that due to their sit-in we have to block the road and keeping in view the importance of Sharea Faisal it cannot be tolerated any longer. We have requested the PTI leaders to discipline their workers and avoid any such provocative move which could have deteriorated the situation.”

When asked about the police claims, PTI’s Jamal Siddiqi said that the party organised the sit-in outside its office, but due to an ‘overwhelming number of participants’ the party had to expand its protest to the main road.

“We announced that the sit-in would start after sunset but a large number of people reached there hours before the scheduled time,” he said. “By the time, the number of participants was so high that it automatically expanded from the service lane to the main road. We did not want commuters to experience any inconvenience and the closure of the road was not deliberate.”

He said the PTI volunteered its services to the law enforcement agencies to keep things under control and the protest remained peaceful, which encouraged many people to attend it later. Samar Ali Khan and Seema Zia, the provincial lawmakers belonging to the PTI who recently resigned, also participated in the sit-in.

Published in Dawn, August 31st , 2014