PESHAWAR: Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf activists on Sunday blocked the Sher Shah Suri Road here against the alleged distribution of tickets among friends and relatives by certain party leaders for the local government elections.

The protesters were holding banners and placards inscribed with slogans against the ‘unfair’ allotment of tickets.

They also shouted slogans against the party’s provincial president Azam Swati, and members of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly.

Talking to media persons, the workers, including Arbab Nisar Khan, Asif Haadi, Aasia Saleh Khattak and Ilyas Khalil, alleged that the tickets were allotted without taking the party’s parliamentary board into confidence.

They claimed that the leaders had obliged their own relatives and friends.

They said that the party chairman Imran Khan had appointed Shah Mehmood Qureshi as in charge of the parliamentary board but the KP president Azam Swati and the local MPAs had violated the discipline.

They alleged that the MPAs, including Arif Yousuf, Ziaullah Afridi, Yaseen Khalil and Shaukat Yousufzai, had given the tickets to their own relatives and close friends and ignored all the founding members of the party.

The protesters demanded of Imran Khan to order inquiry into the matter and replace the provincial president, otherwise the party workers would contest the elections independently.

Referring to a sense of deprivation among the workers over the distribution of tickets, the protesters said that injustices had also been done to the die-hard workers in the allotment of tickets for the last general elections which forced many senior leaders to part ways with the PTI.

They cautioned that if the party’s high command didn’t take notice of the grave situation in Peshawar and other districts of the province, the party would suffer serious setback in the local government elections.

The protesters vowed to demonstrate on daily basis till the leadership addressed their concerns.

The road blockade by the PTI workers caused problems for the commuters as the traffic remained suspended on the main artery for sometime.

The police personnel remained silent spectators as the protesters were holding PTI flags.

Published in Dawn, May 4th, 2015

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