Fawad Chaudhry has announced that PTI’s ‘Haqeeqi Azadi March’ will resume on Thursday (tomorrow) and arrive in Rawalpindi on the designated day. There will be no further extension in the deadline for arriving in Rawalpindi, he said in a tweet on Wednesday.

The PTI leader said Imran Khan will join ‘hundreds of thousands’ of people in Rawalpindi in the third week of November.

Significance of the date

The statement from Fawad suggests that PTI supporters will be storming Rawalpindi around November 20. The date coincides with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman’s proposed visit to Pakistan.

He is expected to announce a multi billion dollar investment project in the country.

It also comes around a week before the next chief of army staff (COAS) is to take office on November 29, when the incumbent, Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa, hangs it up.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has failed to announce Bajwa’s successor so far, though the general is reportedly holding farewell meetings.

Many believe Khan’s long march is aimed at influencing the decision for the appointment of the next COAS.

A report in Dawn newspaper claimed that Khan had ‘abandoned’ his design to sway the decision. It quoted Khan telling senior journalists that he believed the government may appoint “whoever they want.”

However, the renewed announcement about marchers heading towards Rawalpindi means that the standoff persists.

For the third consecutive day on Wednesday, dozens of PTI supporters continued to block roads in Rawalpindi, which falls in the Punjab province controlled by PTI.

Key meeting today

Fawad said that the leadership of the party’s Gujranwala and Lahore chapters would meet today (on Wednesday), followed by a meeting of the senior leadership to finalise the plan, adding that there will be no further delays in the march’s schedule.

The march had come to a halt after an assassination attempt on Imran Khan in Wazirabad last Thursday. The PTI chief was among the injured while one person was killed on the spot.

Days after the attack, speaking to the media from a hospital with his leg in a cast, Imran Khan had said the march would begin under Shah Mahmood Qureshi’s leadership from the same spot where it was attacked.

Imran Khan was discharged from the hospital on Sunday and is now recovering at his residence in Zaman Park, where a meeting of PTI’s senior leadership has been called.

Fears of civil war

PTI leader Omar Sarfraz Cheema said the march would be led by Shah Mahmood Qureshi and Asad Umar in Imran Khan’s absence. “After getting an NRO, PML-N wants to push the country towards civil war,” he told reporters outside Zaman Park.

On Tuesday, Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah warned that if PTI protesters did not clear road ‘people’ may run out of patience and clash with them.

Cheema said that the only way out of the current crisis were fresh elections and that PTI’s fight against corrupt mafias will continue. On the other hand, PTI’s protests in Rawalpindi have continued to disrupt traffic for three days in a row.