<\/p>\n
PTI leader and former federal minister Hammad Azhar on Sunday said that his octogenarian father, who is also the former Punjab governor, was arrested by the Punjab police ahead of an election rally in Lahore.<\/p>\n
The arrest comes as the PTI is set to hold<\/a> its first major countrywide power show after the May 9 protests.<\/p>\n In a post on social media platform X, Hammad said his 82-year-old father Mian Azhar, a PTI-backed independent candidate contesting for the February 8 elections from the NA-129 constituency<\/a>, wanted to \u201clead a rally as per his democratic and constitutional right\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cPakistan has today been reduced to a total fascist state with zero human rights or rule of law. One Nawaz Sharif and his daughter calling the shots and ruining the country,\u201d the PTI leader said.<\/p>\n In another post later, Hammad shared a video of his father. \u201cWe are in the office and attempts have been made to sabotage our rally, but our spirits are elevated. God willing, we will take out the rally,\u201d Mian Azhar could be heard saying in the clip.<\/p>\n Dawn.com<\/em> has reached out to Lahore police for a comment.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the PTI termed the arrest as \u201chighly condemnable\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cPTI\u2019s candidates are right now being stopped from conducting peaceful election rallies, while on the other side PML-N\/PPP and other parties are free to conduct every political event,\u201d it stated.<\/p>\n The party added that the \u201ccontinuous policy of raiding homes, businesses of our leadership and workers is only producing damage to Pakistanis and Pakistan alone\u201d.<\/p>\n On the call of founding chairman Imran Khan, ticket holders and workers of the PTI will hold their first countrywide power show, after May 9, today.<\/p>\n Earlier this week, Imran had directed all the ticket holders to come out in the streets and roads across the country today, warning that the tickets of those who fail to hold rallies would be cancelled.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have given clear direction to ticket holders to come out at 2pm and hold rallies and public meetings in their constituencies. They will address the voters and will give a message that PTI will not allow anyone to take its space,\u201d PTI\u2019s Central Information Secretary Raoof Hasan told Dawn<\/em> earlier.<\/p>\n He said that a message had been conveyed to all the leadership to hold rallies across the country without fear of arrest.<\/p>\n \u201cThey might be arrested but we believe that it will not affect their election campaign. In fact, they may get more votes [of sympathy] as voters will be observing all what is happening with the PTI. We have also released a video message in that regard,\u201d Hasan added.<\/p>\n On the other hand, PTI leader Firdous Shamim Naqvi told a virtual convention of candidates yesterday that the party would also launch its 158-page manifesto today.<\/p>\n On May 9, 2023, after Imran\u2019s arrest<\/a> from the Islamabad High Court, PTI workers held protests across the country. The protest, however, turned into riots with some mobs found attacking military installations<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" PTI leader and former federal minister Hammad Azhar on Sunday said that his octogenarian father, who is also the former Punjab governor, was arrested by the Punjab police ahead of an election rally in Lahore. The arrest comes as the PTI is set to hold its first major countrywide power show after the May 9 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53403,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/i.dawn.com\/large\/2024\/01\/281342447175d12.jpg?r=134318","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[192],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-islamabad-news"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Power show<\/h2>\n