- PTI leader demands army deployment inside and outside polling stations
- Says army role increasing due to corruption and inefficiency of rulers
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan said on Saturday he will run by-election campaigns for the NA-122 and NA-154 constituencies at full throttle, adding that there was no restriction on him to go to these constituencies as per the Supreme Court’s ruling.
The PTI would run campaigns in both the constituencies of Lahore and Lodhran because the party wanted to make a point and defeat rigging, Khan said while addressing a press conference in Lahore.
“I am not the prime minister of the country that I’d be stopped from running election campaigns. I am party’s leader and it is my duty to explain the manifesto,” he averred.
The PTI chief said the atmosphere seemed positive in Lodhran, but for Lahore, his party would write to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) and inspector general (IG) Punjab to initiate legal proceedings against those involved in campaigning against his party and harassing his party workers.
He alleged that police officials in Punjab had been made “Gullu Butts” to influence the by-polls, and said he would make major disclosures about corruption of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) during the election campaign and tell people “how Punjab has been robbed”.
Khan further said he would not accept the by-elections under police, and called for deployment of army inside and outside the polling stations. According to him, the role of the army was increasing because of the inefficiency and corruption of the rulers. He was of the view that the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) should be made autonomous in order to curtail the role of the army and Rangers.
On the occasion, the PTI chief claimed that Crime Investigation Agency (CIA) Superintendent of Police (SP) Umar Virk was involved in threatening his party workers ahead of the by-poll in Lahore.
He said he had evidence that Virk had threatened Ghaffar Gujjar, a PTI worker, who was recently shot, over the telephone two days before he was attacked. “We also have video evidence that a district police officer (DPO) is campaigning for the PML-N in Hafizabad,” he went on to say.
About his visit to the NA-122 constituency, Khan said he got a very favourable response, and added he would give total support to PTI candidate Aleem Khan.
The PTI chief said he was already a member of the National Assembly and had won from three different constituencies, but he had asked the ECP to investigate rigging in the NA-122 because he wanted the people to know the truth.
