Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: An application has been moved in the Supreme Court, requesting it to direct the federal government to restrain Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan and his workers from besieging the federal capital and staging a sit-in.

“Islamabad is not his (Khan’s) personal estate to close, and the residents of Islamabad are not his slaves to torture them… by calling his workers from all over Pakistan and making their lives miserable,” stated the application.

The application, submitted under Rule 6 of the Supreme Court Rules 1980, was filed by Advocate Tariq Asad who made the Interior Ministry, Information Ministry, the Pakistan Electronic Media and Regulatory Authority (PEMRA), PTI Chairman Imran Khan, National Accountability Bureau, Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) director general and Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) chairman respondents.

The application was filed just a day before the date of hearing of different constitutional petitions on Panama leaks, wherein the PTI is also a petitioner. A three-judge bench, headed by Chief Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali, will take up the petitions for hearing today (Thursday).

According to the application, the PTI chief has also asked party members to raise funds for shutting Islamabad down on November 2 and staging the sit-in.

The applicant noted that the previous sit-in of the PTI lasted for 128 days, and functions of the federation and provinces – being dependent on Islamabad Secretariat – were adversely affected, as the roads were blocked and offices locked. He stated that the people were confined to their houses due to that activity and the government suffered an irreparable loss of around Rs 1 trillion.

He stated that the PTI chief was dragging the state towards a constitutional breakdown, and the people feared a coup-like situation. The applicant stated that political instability leads to economic instability, and that such instabilities provide an opportunity to external forces, anti-state elements and pressure groups to act against the country for their own vested interests. “Movements like that of Imran Khan would bear no fruits,” he said, adding that it would just create political instability and subsequently add to the economic crisis.