LAHORE: Fleets of vehicles loaded with charged workers and decorated with Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) flags kept on bumping their way to the Raiwind march venue on Friday through city roads throughout the day.

The fleets of vehicles had representation from across the country besides Lahore.

The participants were also from several walks of life.

Muhammad Rafique, one of the participants heading towards the venue, said he was a government servant.

“Though I’m a government servant, I really want to see Imran Khan in power; all those to whom we’ve voted earlier have failed to deliver,” he said.

He said though he was a public servant but he was attending the rally as a “duty because there should be an end to corruption.”

The party was well prepared to host the show. Besides the city areas, several reception camps had been set up on Raiwind Road to receive workers’ convoys. There was no shortage of packaged food and water at camps for the workers coming from outside Lahore.

Leaders were also present to welcome the participants.

“I expect over 200,000 people in the rally,” Ashraf Sohna, a PTI leader from Okara, said while receiving the participants at the venue.

“It will be a great success of the party if such a huge number of people attend the event.”

When asked why not one million people, as promised by the party, Mr Sohna said the most important thing was to hold the rally near the palace of a king that had never happened. Like the workers, Mr Sohna was clueless about the final announcement of PTI chief Imran Khan at the rally.

Asad Rehman, a student from Lahore, was just an onlooker at the rally.

“Though my sympathies are with the PTI, but I request Mr Khan to focus on KP rather than creating disturbance (for others),” he said.

Most of the public and private schools on Raiwind Road remained closed on Friday.

“Our school’s main campus remained closed on Friday after we decided to do so keeping in view the possible problems to the students and their parents,” a senior official of the PakTurk Schools’ main campus at Khyaban-i-Jinnah told Dawn.

According to an official of a leading schools’ chain in Model Town, the attendance of the students remained poor. “Most of the school vans’ owners didn’t pick students fearing that their vehicles might be damaged by political workers,” an official said.

Workers marked their entrance to the venue with slogans in favour of the party and dancing on party songs.

Camps too kept on blaring party songs - mainly PTI’s signature song “jab aiy ga Imran, sab ki jan”, sung by Seraiki folk singer Attaullah Issa Khelvi.

Shopkeepers on Raiwind, however, were critical to the PTI for choosing the road for the rally.

Raiwind Road also witnesses a huge rush of people during the days of the Raiwind tableeghi congregation.

“You cannot imagine the situation we are passing through since Thursday as our businesses and passages are closed,” said Abdul Majeed, sitting outside of his closed shop on the road. He criticised the government as well for barricading the area.

Published in Dawn, October 1st, 2016