LAHORE: Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party on Wednesday suspended its Jail Bharo Tehreek (court arrest movement) after the supreme court ordered the election commission to hold polls in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces within 90 days of the dissolution of the assemblies as stipulated by the Constitution.
The Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa assemblies were dissolved on January 14 and 18, respectively, by Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) as part of its bid to force early general elections in the country. A five-member bench headed by chief justice Umar Ata Bandial issued the decision on Wednesday that paved the way for elections in the two provinces, currently run by interim governments.
The court also ruled that President Arif Alvi’s orders to hold elections on April 9 will be binding on the Punjab assembly but not on the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa assembly, as the latter was dissolved by the governor, while the former was not.
“We welcome the SC judgement,” Khan tweeted. His tweet comes a day after his party’s 280 activists were arrested over two days, taking the total number of arrests to 600. Khan kicked off the “Jail Bharo Tehreek” on February 22 from Lahore over “violation of human rights, abuse of the Constitution and an economic meltdown”.