Imran shifts rally against ECP members to Lahore

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chairman Imran Khan announced on Tuesday to hold a public meeting in Lahore on October 9, originally scheduled for October 4 in Islamabad against the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) members.
The decision to shift the rally from Islamabad to Lahore was decided in a meeting chaired by Imran Khan here after the Islamabad administration declined to give permission to it for its show at the Parade Ground due to security reasons.
Speaking to news conference, the PTI chief said the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) took a stay order in NA-154 Lodhran due to fear of defeat just two weeks before October 11, the polling day. He again alleged there had been massive rigging in the 2013 elections.
“There had been dhandla and not dhandli in the 2013 general elections,” he charged. He challenged the Election Commission, under what law he had been barred from carrying out election campaign in Lahore.
Imran said that his party would not sit back and would go ahead with its agitation against the Election Commission, alleging that the electoral body and the ruling PML-N had a nexus to rig the elections again.
The PTI chairman said that on October 11, he would unfold the new line of action against the Election Commission, saying without reforms in the electoral body, the system could not be rectified.
“They have been telling us not to run away from NA-154 by-election and right before the election, they themselves got the stay order: this is typical Shahbaz Sharif type politics where he himself hid behind a stay order and remained chief minister for four years,” the PTI chairman alleged.
Imran asked the Election Commission what action it had taken against the election staff after in a constituency, 53,000 votes were found to be bogus, it was not mere incompetence but actually rigging.
The PTI chief expressed apprehension that following the stay order in Lodhran, the PML-N could take shelter behind such arrangement in NA-122 too. He made it clear that the PTI in its meeting had decided not to stop its protest against the Election Commission. “We will protest in Lahore but our protests will not stop there, we will come back to Islamabad again. We will stage a rally in Lahore on October 9 and then announce our protest date after October 11 for D-Chowk here,” he maintained.
Imran claimed that the election tribunal in its verdict had clearly stated that Siddique Baloch of the PML-N was an illiterate person, having a counterfeit degree. He took the ruling PML-N government to task for allegedly posting inefficient persons to run the state entities.
Imran expressed grief over the Mina tragedy and demanded the government to expedite efforts to locate the missing pilgrims.