Islamabad, April 5 : Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf party workers besieged a hotel here in Gulberg where several disgruntled PTI lawmakers were staying along with hundreds of PML-N MPAs ahead of the crucial election of the Punjab chief minister scheduled for Wednesday, Dawn reported on Tuesday. The PTI workers shouted slogans against their party dissidents whom they called ‘traitors’ and demanded that the PML-N ‘release’ their 20 or so lawmakers.
Earlier PTI Punjab information secretary Mussarat Jamshed Cheema had given a call to party workers and office-bearers to reach the hotel to protest against the ‘traitors’. The PTI workers also tried to forcibly enter the hotel by removing the barriers which led to some of the PML-N lawmakers coming out of their hotel rooms and then they started raising slogans against Imran Khan, leading to a stand off. Some PML-N leaders even threatened to call their own party workers to the hotel. The situation was finally diffused after about an hour and a half and traffic during which time the traffic came to a halt on Main Boulevard, Gulberg, for several hours. Additional police force was later deployed outside the hotel to protect the lawmakers. Leader of the Opposition in the Punjab Assembly Hamza Shehbaz, also a nominee for the chief minister’s post, claimed that some 200 MPAs were present in the hotel when the PTI activists tried to barge in, adding that Punjab Assembly deputy speaker might suspend over 40 opposition as well as PTI dissident lawmakers ahead of the chief minister’s election on Wednesday.
With agency inputs
