SAHIWAL: Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf Chairman Imran Khan declared on Saturday that talks would not be resumed with the government.

Addressing a public meeting at Sheikh Zafar Ali Stadium here on Saturday, he said on the one hand the Nawaz Sharif government had got him declared an “Ishtihari” but on the other they had invited him for talks. “How can a government hold talks with an Ishtihari?”

The PTI chief said Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Pervez Khattak would move the Supreme Court against the federal government for not providing enough funds to his province to accommodate three million people displaced because of Operation Zarb-i-Azb.

He said a coal-fired 1,300MW power project to be set up at Qadirabad would destroy local ecology and agriculture. It should be set up at a barren land, instead of a fertile agriculture land, he said.

Awami Muslim League chief Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said thieves, robbers and dictators were running the democratic set-up for the past 25 years.

PTI leaders Dr Yasmin Rashid, Rai Hasan Nawaz and Shakeel Khan Niazi also spoke.

The stadium was jam-packed with PTI supporters. Independent observers say that unlike the PTI’s public meetings held in other cities over the past few weeks there was no extraordinary participation of women in the Sahiwal rally.

About 1,500 police personnel, including 70 female constables, were deployed to the venue.

Published in Dawn, November 16th , 2014