RAWALPINDI: The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) has roped in 200 young women, mostly university students, in the garrison city to canvass for the cantonment board elections.

The party formed two teams to start a door-to-door campaign in Rawalpindi and Chaklala cantonments. The elections in the cantonment areas will be held on April 25.

A senior PTI leader told Dawn that after the announcement of party-based elections, the PTI decided to use its main force – the youth – for electioneering.

He said two special teams would be headed by the Punjab North general secretary Zahid Kazmi, MPAs Arif Abbasi and Asif Mehmood, Chaudhry Muqarib, Yasmeen Farooqi and Sabrina Javed.

“As many as 100 women in each team will start their campaign from April 7 to spread Imran Khan’s message about his vision for the rights of citizens and good governance.”

He said the party would issue cards to the team members for their identification. They would get training at the PTI North Punjab office at Saddar from Saturday.

The PTI leader said the basic aim of the campaign was to mobilise women voters, adding that the PTI wanted to start the campaign from April 4 but at a meeting held on Thursday it was decided to launch door-to-door drive after the PTI’s public meeting in Rawalpindi on April 6.

He said a special information technology cell had been set up to spread the party’s message through SMS.

When contacted, Zahid Kazmi confirmed that the PTI had engaged 200 women students to canvass in the cantonment elections. He said the party wanted to mobilise its women supporters and workers to convince the citizens to stand up against bad governance of the PML-N.

Mr Kazmi said the PTI would launch the election campaign from April 6 in the garrison city, adding that a large number of old workers and supporters of the PPP and PML-N would join the PTI.

Published in Dawn, April 4th, 2015

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