'PTI decides on long march after talks with allies'

Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Information and Public Relations Minister Shafi Jan on Saturday said the decision to hold a long march towards Islamabad on September 27 was taken after mutual consultation between Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf and its allied parties.

PTI wants to move ahead jointly with its allies and is maintaining contacts with religious parties and other political forces in this regard, he added.

The long march will not be a one-day affair and could stretch over several days, Shafi Jan said. "We will proceed towards Islamabad with complete preparation and all necessary arrangements are being made," he stated.

The minister said PTI had pursued every constitutional and legal avenue to secure the fundamental, constitutional and legal rights of founder chairman Imran Khan. "However, those rights were taken away and every path was blocked. Now we have no option left except the long march," he remarked.

Shafi Jan said the movement was being organised on a nationwide scale. The party was reaching out to Punjab and other provinces, while a series of seminars was also being launched at various universities. Youth would form the vanguard of the movement and would lead it. Public participation, he claimed, would run into the millions.

The doors of PTI remained open to all political parties opposed to the present federal government, the minister said. If the Pakistan People's Party also wished to free itself from the current government, it should resign from the constitutional offices it holds in the federal set-up and sit in the opposition.

Those who had "looted the people's mandate" would now have to answer before the court of the people, Shafi Jan asserted. PTI's peaceful political struggle for the restoration of the public mandate, the supremacy of the constitution and law, and the release of Imran Khan would continue, he added.