PESHAWAR: The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chapter on Tuesday said more people from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa would take part in the ‘Azadi March’ in Islamabad on August 14 than those from Punjab.

During a meeting here, it also warned the federal government against trying to stop marchers and insisted separate plans had been made to ensure that they reach the federal capital.

The meeting was chaired by PTI provincial president Khalid Masud at the party’s secretariat, according to a news release issued here.

Masud said the people eagerly waited for the historic ‘Azadi March’ to happen against the May 2013 election rigging.

“The desperately want to take to the roads against the rotten system of governance and that the PTI’s march would help build a new Pakistan,” he said.

The PTI leader said the people were ready to end monarchy and that the people, who had come to power through rigged elections, should be ready to face them.

He said the marchers would stay put on the Islamabad streets until the Nawaz Sharif-led federal government was dismissed. Masud said his party had mobilised its workers to oust the people, who had stolen the people’s mandate by rigging the elections.

He said the marchers would reach Islamabad using public transport, cars and motorcycles and that any act to stop them would be unconstitutional.

The PTI leader said the Constitution had given the people the right marchers to lodge protest on any issue.

He said free, fair and transparent elections were the basic requirement for a true democracy, so winning elections by rigging was a crime.

Masud said the local PTI leaders would take out ‘Azadi processions’ across the province before marching on Islamabad.

On the occasion, PTI women wing president Professor Mehr Taj Roghani said the ‘Azadi March’ would ensure dispensation of justice to the people on the massive fraud in the last general elections and that the people, especially women, wanted to help the PTI chairman achieve his mission on national development.

Published in Dawn, August 6th, 2014