“We don’t need such an election,” he said while addressing a public gathering in Pishin on Saturday. “You want to have rigging, so we today announce our decision to boycott the election.”

By-elections will be held for five vacant seats of the National Assembly; 12 of the Punjab Assembly, two each of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan legislatures as well as one of the Sindh Assembly. In addition, re-polling in all constituencies of PB-50 (Killa Abdullah) will also take place on the same day.

Fazl added that his party was always against vote-rigging and they also took out similar protests in 2018.

“This is not the time to fight with each other. Politicians have always been used. Politicians should not be sold for seats,” the JUI-F chief said.

He went on to add that the protest campaign would be lead across the country. “We won’t allow the fake government to run the affairs,” he said.