The former ruling party, PTI, would begin its Jail Bharo Tehreek, from Lahore on Wednesday (February 22), party chief Imran Khan announced in an address to the workers.

“I am telling all my party to start preparations today [for Jail Bharo Tehreek]. We will begin it from Lahore and then we will court arrest every next day in other big cities of Pakistan,” he said on Friday.

The court arrest drive, which was announced without any date in a live address earlier this month, came after some of PTI’s leaders and allies were arrested. Shehbaz Gill, Senator Azam Swati, Fawad Chaudhry, and Awami Muslim League chief Sheikh Rasheed are some of the leaders who were put behind bars under the rule of the coalition government.

He had announced a similar movement in October that was aimed at forcing the government to hold elections but it did not pan out as planned.

Imran, who was ousted through a trust vote in April 2022, urged supporters to stop living in fear (yeh khof k boot ko tor do). He thanked party workers for turning up in large numbers in the wee hours of Friday when senior party leaders made the call amid fears that Imran would be put behind bars.

“I want to thank all those people when they hear I am being jailed they come here and all night I hear their voices and slogans. So I want to thank them,” he said and claimed that the government would run short of jails when the PTI would court arrest.

“But, it will not happen that they [government] will do all kinds of cruelty with jails to intimidate the people,” Imran added.

The opposition, which believes that the PTI should begin this so-called campaign with senior leaders, has cast doubts on the drive. “[I] don’t know how those who take bail in every case will be able to fill jails,” Pakistan Peoples Party leader Qamar Zaman Kaira said in an interview with Aaj News on February 6.

Kaira, who is serving as the adviser to the PM on Kashmir Affairs and Gilgit Baltistan in the 85-member federal cabinet, had added that if the Imran-led party wished then they should go for it. “It is good that they will be trained to see what happens in prisons,” he had added.

This campaign would lead all across the country, Imran added.

The PTI chief has said that he has been waiting for the date of the next elections since the provincial assemblies of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa were dissolved.