ISLAMABAD: The Tehreek Tahaffuz Aiyeen-e-Pakistan (TTAP) Friday staged demonstrations in different parts of the country with Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa leading the act to protest inflation, record hike in petrol and diesel prices and ‘injustice’ being meted out to the PTI jailed leader and former premier Imran Khan.
The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), which is the leading component of the opposition, complained about the provincial governments’ highhandedness and placing of hurdles in the legitimate right to protest by political parties.
PTI Information Secretary Sheikh Waqas Akram alleged that the regime responded with heavy-handedness through night-time raids and intimidation of workers. He pointed out that this is the same political grouping that once filled the streets against rising prices, yet today presides over the worst cost of living crisis in recent memory while its own privileges remain untouched.
Talking to The News here, he claimed that the PTI had held peaceful demonstrations and rallies across Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP) while in other provinces, particularly, in Punjab, due to fascist tactics by the administration, desired level of agitation could not be materialised.
“If there are no hurdles and no fear of unjust arrests and filing of fake cases, then none could stop people from pouring in to roads and streets of Pakistan against these rulers,” he added.
A peaceful protest rally was staged in Islamabad to push for the release and treatment of PTI founder chairman, high inflation, absence of rule of law and expensive petrol.
Local PTI chapter General Secretary Malik Aamir Ali, District President Raja Sohail Satti, Maimuna Kamal, Murad Bukhari, Sabeen Younis, ISF activists and others participated in the rally. Many of them were carrying portraits of Imran Khan and placards inscribed with anti-ruler slogans.
Meanwhile, Waqas Akram expressed alarm over Pakistan’s growing vulnerability to trans-boundary risks, underscored by recent flood alerts triggered by the opening of India’s Salal Dam spillway gates. He said chronic governance failures and elite driven priorities have prevented the construction of new water reservoirs. Massive cost escalations in critical projects such as the Diamer Bhasha Dam and Tarbela extensions, he stated, directly threaten the country’s future irrigation stability, water storage capacity, and energy security.
He also condemned the politically driven expansion of sugarcane cultivation and sugar mills in traditional cotton growing regions such as Rahim Yar Khan. This unchecked shift, he said, is accelerating environmental degradation, groundwater depletion, and soil contamination while steadily destroying cotton, a crop vital to Pakistan’s exports and textile industry.
Waqas Akram noted that the honourable Islamabad High Court had directed that proceedings in the Al-Qadir Trust case move forward on a firm timeline and called for alternative counsel arrangements by June 18, 2026. He welcomed any measure that holds the promise of expeditious justice.
He alleged restrictions continued to prevent Imran Khan from offering congregational Eid prayers. Waqas Akram urged the superior judiciary to take suo motu cognizance of this matter, which directly engages both constitutional guarantees and fundamental religious rights of a prisoner.
Meanwhile, Tehreek Tahaffuz Aiyeen-e-Pakistan (TTAP) Chairman Mehmood Khan Achakzai, who is also leader of the opposition in the National Assembly, and Allama Nasir Abbas, leader of opposition in Senate, Friday called the protests held on Friday a strong voice of masses’ consciousness.
They urged all political and social forces to unite and continue the struggle for restoration of the constitution, democracy, and public rights in the country.
“The magnificent protest held across the country on Friday by the (opposition) allied parties, workers and the public on a four-point agenda are a strong voice of public consciousness, national pride and constitutional struggle,” they said in a joint statement issued here.
The two opposition leaders said that the strong participation of the public in the nationwide protest for shifting of former premier Imran Khan to Al-Shifa Hospital for treatment, inflation, continuously rising prices of petroleum products and public economic distress is a proof that the nation has united against oppression, injustice and economic disaster.
They underlined that the order, passion and democratic manner in which the allied parties, workers, lawyers, students, workers and different classes of the opposition alliance recorded their protest is commendable. Both the leaders said that the public has given a clear message that basic human rights, supremacy of the Constitution and public issues cannot be kept silent anymore.
