The ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) decided on Monday to launch a mass contact campaign to mobilise the party at grassroots level ahead of the local government elections in the Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Sindh.

This was decided during a meeting of the party’s central executive committee (CEC) chaired by Prime Minister Imran Khan who is also chairman of the party.

Speaking at a presser after the CEC meeting, the state minister for the information and broadcasting, Farrukh Habib, said that the PTI has chalked out a plan to launch a country-wide mass contact campaign to mobilise the party at the grassroots level, besides highlighting the government’s major initiatives.

“The prime minister [Imran Khan] himself will lead the campaign on the desire of the PTI parliamentarians,” he added.

He said that the PTI was the only party, which had the largest public meetings held across the country to its credit. Farrukh said the provincial presidents had been asked to arrange party conventions as it was their responsibility to mobilise the party on the ground.

According to the plan, the prime minister, who was also the chairman PTI, would address the large public gatherings to be arranged in the breadth and length of the country.

On February 9, he said, Imran Khan would be in Faisalabad to launch the “health card”, which would provide a family free medical treatment of upto Rs1 million.

“The people of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Islamabad, Punjab and Gilgit-Baltistan were already availing the free treatment facility,” he added.

He said by March 31, the entire population of Punjab would be covered under the PTI government’s flagship “health card” initiative for which an amount of Rs450 billion had been allocated by the provincial government.

Divulging other details of the meeting, the minister said all the provincial presidents of PTI presented their reports on the party’s reorganisation, and the party chairman directed to complete the process at district level by February 15.

He said the party notified its Permanent Parliamentary Board to look after matters pertaining to the upcoming local government elections in the provinces.

He said that the CEC congratulated the prime minister and his team for their highly successful visit to China. The joint communique issued after the prime minister’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping reflected the time-tested and strong relations between the two countries, he noted.

Lashing out at the critics of visit, he said the national interest should be given preference over personal ones. Those, who were propagating against the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), needed to know that the mega project was in full swing.

Major work on the CPEC projects had been completed during the present government. “You will soon see that the fruits of CPEC will start reaching the common man,” he remarked.

He also commented on reconciliation of two major opposition parties and said they “united” once again to stop the government from retrieving the looted wealth stashed by their corrupt leadership abroad.

“The ongoing accountability process will continue unhindered as the opposition cannot blackmail the government,” he maintained.

To a query, he said the opposition’s conspiracies and nefarious designs posed no threat to the government.

“We are not afraid of their resignations, no confidence motion and long marches,” he added.

He said that both Shehbaz Sharif of the PML-N and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari must not compare themselves with Imran Khan, adding the duo should first clarify how they stashed taxpayers’ money in foreign banks.

This report was first published in Business Recorder on February 8, 2022.