The central body of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf has urged President Arif Alvi to immediately announce a date for the general election.

The call came on the day President Alvi completed his five-year term on Friday. He will stay in office until a successor is elected.

The core committee of the PTI held “its most important meeting” on Friday and passed the resolution calling on the president to announce an election date, a statement said.

The party said Pakistan was facing constitutional, democratic, economic and social crises and that Article 48(5) empowered the president to give an election date.

“If the President of the country does not announce the date of the elections, he will be responsible for the desecration of the Constitution and violation of the basic constitutional and democratic rights of the people,” the party said in the statement posted to social media platform X.

The statement did not say who participated in the core committee meeting as the party chairman, vice chairman, and president remain in jail.

While PTI has claimed for months that Article 48(5) empowered the president to give an election date, the stance has been rejected by the Election Commission of Pakistan, which in a letter to the president has made it clear that Article 48(5) applies only when the National Assembly is dissolved by the president under Article 58(2)b.

Since the National Assembly was dissolved under Article 85(1) on the advice of the prime minister, only the ECP can announce the election date, the statement said.