ISLAMABAD: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Sohail Afridi on Wednesday filed a petition with the Islamabad High Court (IHC) seeking permission to meet former prime minister and PTI founder Imran Khan ahead of the provincial budget for the next fiscal year.

Speaking to reporters at the IHC alongside KP Finance Adviser Muzammil Aslam, the chief minister said a meeting with the PTI founder was essential as the provincial budget had been prepared and required his final approval. He maintained that the people of KP had given their mandate to the PTI founder, adding that consultation with him on the budget was necessary.

CM Afridi said the province was being deprived of its due share of resources and alleged that KP was being punished for supporting the PTI founder. He criticised the federal government’s development allocations, claiming the province had been ignored in the previous federal budget and development programme.

The chief minister also expressed concern over the country’s economic situation, saying priority should be given to the economy and the welfare of poor citizens. He alleged that terrorism had seen a rise in KP and accused the federal government of treating the province unfairly.

He announced that PTI would stage a protest outside Parliament during the budget session, which is expected to be held on June 10, and reiterated that, as chief minister, he was authorised to make decisions on behalf of the provincial government.

Aslam told reporters that in the last meeting with the PTI founder last year, he had consulted him on budget matters.

Aslam said the PTI founder had instructed that he be consulted before every budget is prepared. However, he said no meeting had taken place before the current budget exercise despite the importance of such consultations.

He said KP had received only a small allocation from the federal government’s development programme and claimed that only six provincial projects had been included in the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP).

He argued that a meeting with the PTI founder was necessary for budget-related consultations and stressed that the proposed meeting would be non-political.

Imran has been in jail since August 2023. He has been serving a 14-year sentence in the £190 million corruption case and a 17-year sentence in the Toshakhana-2 case at Rawalpindi’s Adiala jail. The PTI regularly stages sit-ins outside Adiala jail on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the court-mandated days for meetings with Imran, which have remained suspended in recent months.

A day earlier, aut­h­orities had kept CM Afr­idi and Imran Khan’s sister Aleema Khan from meeting the incarcerated former prime minister in Adiala jail yet again.