LAHORE: The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf and the Pakistan Awami Tehreek vowed on Wednesday to hold marches on Thursday (today) with a common agenda of dislodging the PML-N government.

While the PTI has been promised free access to Islamabad, PAT leader Dr Tahirul Qadri and his supporters were still besieged by police at the Minhajul Quran secretariat on Wednesday night.

Unlike Tuesday when PTI leader Shah Mehmood Qureshi said the PTI and PAT would jointly march on Islamabad, Imran Khan did not mention the PAT in his address to workers of his party at his residence on Wednesday night.

He called on Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to step down and called for mid-term elections under a neutral, non-political government.

Mr Khan retracted his earlier statement about forming a technocrats’ government, apparently to appease his party’s president Javed Hashmi, who had expressed reservations over the demand and left for Multan on Tuesday night.

The PTI chief said that he would present demands again, when the Azadi March would reach its destination — Islamabad.

He said the march would be within the limits of the constitution. “We stayed within the ambit of the constitution yesterday and today and will follow it tomorrow,” he said in reply to a reporter’s question about the Lahore High Court’s order banning any unconstitutional protest, rallies and sit-ins.

In his news conference on Wed­nes­day night, Dr Qadri pledged allegiance to the law of the land. Assuring that his march would remain peaceful, he announced that the marchers would leave for Islamabad on Thursday at all cost.

Published in Dawn, August 14th, 2014