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• Punjab police round up hundreds as supporters hold small rallies across province; four cases registered in Lahore
• Teargas used to disperse Karachi protest; over 40 briefly detained in Quetta; Gandapur addresses rally in KP
• PTI leaders blame ‘lack of coordination’, crackdown for lacklustre performance
• Azma mocks protest as ‘video stunt’ as party lashes out against Punjab administration
LAHORE: The police rounded up more than 800 party supporters as the PTI struggled to organise its planned power show in Punjab to mark the second anniversary of its founder Imran Khan’s incarceration in a corruption case.
The protest organised on the call of Mr Khan had already been mired in controversy after Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur extended the supposed deadline by three months at a press conference in Lahore last month. On Tuesday, the party failed to put up an impressive show, with the exception of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where big gatherings were organised in the absence of a police crackdown.
In Punjab, the centre of this movement, police detained about 800 supporters, as the PTI workers staged small rallies in different cities, particularly Lahore, where the ticket-holders from across the province had been asked to converge.
In response, they faced police heavy-handedness, as four FIRs, nominating different protesters on the charges of obstructing roads, sloganeering against the government, and resisting authorities, were registered.
The PTI media cell claimed that about 300 protesters were arrested from Lahore alone. The Punjab police had been raiding party workers’ residences for the past three days, and the crackdown continued on Tuesday as well. The police arrested 11 MPAs, including Punjab Assembly Deputy Opposition leader Moeen Riaz Qureshi, the party claimed. Police sources confirmed the arrest, saying 980 protesters had been rounded up from across the province, including 380 participants from Lahore.
In Rawalpindi, which was said to be another protest point, the party failed to put up a power show, as only a handful of protesters took to the streets. A party leader told Dawn that there were two main reasons that the party workers and supporters did not respond to the call of protest. “One is that the workers and supporters mostly respond to the call of Imran Khan only…,” he said, adding that the top leadership was also underground.
However, another senior party leader blamed it on mismanagement, saying they were called to Lahore with a task to bring at least 50 people along. “…we went there and there was no coordination of where all the people would assemble,” he claimed.
Similar concerns were expressed by other PTI leaders on the condition of anonymity. They questioned the role of PTI Punjab Chief Organiser Aliya Hamza in organising this protest, saying she should have coordinated it better. In Islamabad, there was no major protest and the supporters, including children and women, who took to the streets were briefly detained by the capital police.
Police crackdown
In Karachi, the police fired teargas to disperse about 500 people marching through the port city, AFP reported.
In Quetta, the PTI and the Pashtunkhwa Milli Awami Party (PkMAP) organised a joint rally, which was disrupted by the police at Meezan Chowk, where the participants chanted slogans against the government amid speeches by their leaders. Police detained about 40 activists and took them to the City police station.
“Police kept the arrested activists in custody for an hour and later released them,” a senior police official told Dawn. No case was registered, however. As many as 35 women workers also staged a demonstration in front of the Quetta Press Club.
The Balochistan police also foiled an attempt by the PTI activists to sever Balochistan’s road link with Punjab by blocking the Loralai-Dera Ghazi Khan highway near Barkhan.
However, the police used force to disperse the protesters. The local administration then held talks with the protesters and the road was completely opened to traffic.
In KP, rallies and processions were arranged at the district level led by the MNAs, MPAs, tehsil chairmen, and local leaders of the respective areas. Unlike Punjab, no one was arrested in the province ruled by the PTI. The major procession in the province was led by CM Ali Amin Gandapur in Peshawar and attended by MNA Sher Ali Arbab, provincial ministers, MPAs and others.
In Muzaffarabad, the police broke up a PTI protest outside the press club in the afternoon and arrested three local leaders, who were shifted to the City police station in connection with a different case. They were released after their lawyers secured bail.
PTI slams crackdown
The PTI, meanwhile, slammed the government for the crackdown. PTI Central Information Secretary Sheikh Waqas Akram, in a statement, claimed that Punjab had been virtually transformed into a “lawless zone where constitutional rights were routinely trampled”.
“An elderly [person] like Rehana Dar is being dragged by the shameless Punjab Police, a disgraceful sight,” he said. He asserted that the people stood firmly with their leader Imran Khan in the struggle to transform Pakistan into a “truly independent nation—not a state controlled by a handful of elites”.
Reacting to State Minister for Interior Tallal Chaudhry’s claim that PTI could protest ‘if only they sought permission,’ Mr Waqas fired back, saying: “We formally applied to hold rallies at Minar-i-Pakistan and Islamabad’s F-9 Park—but this regime denied both requests.”
Meanwhile, the Punjab information minister, Azma Bokhari, termed the Tuesday protest a “video stunt”. “PTI’s Aliya Hamza was filming the protest act with four to five cars while blocking traffic and calling it a historic rally. It’s both unfortunate and laughable,” she said. “There were barely 15 people in the entire protest rally,” Ms Bokhari quipped.
Ikram Junaidi and Munawar Azeem in Islamabad, Aamir Yasin in Rawalpindi, Mohammad Ashfaq in Peshawar, Saleem Shahid in Quetta and Tariq Naqash in Muzzaffarabad also contributed to this report
Published in Dawn, August 6th, 2025
