People preferred to stay at home rather than attend the PTI march: Rana Sanaullah
ISLAMABAD, May 25 (SABAH): Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah Khan on Wednesday criticised the PTI’s “Azadi March” and said that even the government bought Imran Khan’s “lies” of leading a march with two million people toward Islamabad.
The interior minister, while speaking during a press conference in Islamabad alongside Minister for Information and Broadcasting Marriyum Aurangzeb, said that Imran Khan was leading the march with around five to six thousand people only against his claim of holding the biggest gathering in Pakistan.
The PML-N leader said that the government should not have made preparations on such a big scale if it knew that the march will only have a few attendees.
“We stopped the metro operations, the examinations were postponed, people faced trouble commuting, and the patients faced issues as well,” he added.
Rana Sanaullah said that he apologises to the people on behalf of the government for troubling them and maintained that the PTI portrayed a picture of a huge crowd marching towards the capital. “Only people from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa attended the march,” the interior minister claimed.
Talking about Punjab’s situation, the minister said that the situation in the province has settled down and there is “complete peace at the moment.”
He expressed his happiness and said that the people of Punjab are not a part of this “fitna” adding “may Allah guide those who attended the march.
Rana Sanaullah added that the people in Balochistan do not even know about this “fasad”, while people in Sindh have refused to be a part of it. “Only a few thousand people are a part of the march and they are in possession of weapons and teargas. They are trying to overtake the federal capital while using government protocol,” he added.
He went on to say that the PTI chairman wants to “instigate” a civil war. Calling the march an “unconstitutional act”, the PML-N leader said that the PTI will have to face the consequences.
He maintained that people preferred to stay at home rather than attend the march. “People want the nation to move forward,” he said, thanking the media for playing a positive role in the ongoing situation.
The minister said that the Supreme Court of Pakistan has directed to “form a negotiating team between the government and the PTI”, and added that the PTI has formed a four-member committee and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has appointed a team. “The party can hold public meetings, however, the violations of the law cannot be tolerated,” he added.
Rana Sanaullah said the Punjab police arrested at least 1,700 members of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) in “4,414 raids across the province” in a bid to scuttle the ‘bloody’ long march by the former ruling party.
Rana Sanaullah said that the police were told by the government not to adopt an “aggressive stance” during the raids.
Rana Sanaullah told journalists that at least 1700 arrests were made during these raids. “Out of these 1700, 250 people signed affidavits that they were not part of this ‘fitna’ and were allowed to go home while the rest of them had been detained under MPO (Maintenance of Public Order) 16,” the minister added.
In response to a question, Rana Sanaullah said if arrests made by the Sindh police were added to the number of detention in Punjab then the number could have been “1720 or 1724”.
Rana Sanaullah claimed that people refused to join the ‘anarchic’ protest of the PTI and chose to stay at home. He claimed out of 200 million residents of Lahore, only “250-300 came out to express their support for the former ruling party”. He said the public wanted to see Pakistan grow in a democratic way instead of becoming part of a plan to derail its progress.
Earlier, the Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah said that the government will not tolerate terrorism in guise of politics after police seized huge cache of weapons from residence of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leader in provincial capital of Punjab ahead of their long march.
In his statement, the federal minister said that PTI General Secretary’s house is a depot of ammunition and the discovery of arms from the homes of PTI officials is proof of a bloody march. The nation has seen that from where did the bullet came which killed an innocent police personnel. He urged former Prime Minister Imran Khan to follow the constitution and law.