Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) has postponed its planned September 27 long march to Islamabad by one week, with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Sohail Afridi announcing on Friday that the protest caravan will now depart from Peshawar on October 4 instead. The delay comes just two days after PakDaily reported on the sweeping security clampdown — Rangers deployment, nationwide Section 144 orders, and a mass detention drive — that authorities had imposed across the country ahead of the original march date (see our earlier coverage of the Islamabad lockdown).
Afridi told reporters the party’s Political Committee had unanimously approved the delay after weighing the situation on the ground. “The Political Committee has unanimously decided that our long march will start its journey from Peshawar on (next) Sunday, October 4,” he said, according to The Nation.
PTI leaders cited three main factors behind the decision:
- Transport shortage: vehicle owners refused to provide coasters and buses for the march, citing financial and security concerns after reports that police had impounded thousands of commercial vehicles and detained their drivers.
- Detentions in KP: several PTI provincial ministers and MPAs from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa were being held by police in the run-up to the march, according to Afridi.
- Ground situation: the extensive security restrictions already in place — container walls, blocked highways and a heavy police presence across Punjab and the capital — made the original September 27 timeline impractical, the party said.
“We are political people and will pursue a political struggle,” Afridi said, adding that PTI would resist any repeat of a May 9-style crackdown on the party. He also questioned the timing of the restrictions on movement into the province: “The question is whether a deliberate effort has now been set in motion to disconnect Khyber Pakhtunkhwa from the rest of Pakistan.”
PTI Chairman Barrister Gohar Ali Khan met opposition alliance leaders Mahmood Khan Achakzai and Raja Nasir Abbas in Islamabad to brief them on the decision. Achakzai had reportedly favoured pressing ahead with the original date and was said to be unconvinced by the postponement, while allies in the Tehreek Tahaffuz Ayeen Pakistan (TTAP) bloc also voiced disagreement over the lack of prior coordination. Separately, the party has framed October 5 — founder Imran Khan’s birthday — as a follow-on event, with Afridi describing plans for celebrations in Islamabad billed as a “Victory Day.”
The postponement leaves the federal government’s security arrangements largely in place for an extra week, at a steep additional cost, according to a Dawn report. The newspaper cited official figures on the container-rental bill alone, which is only one part of the overall security operation:
| Security Cost Item | Original Plan (1 Week) | After Postponement (2 Weeks) |
|---|---|---|
| Container rental (1,550 containers × Rs30,000/day) | Rs325.5 million | Rs651 million |
| Sindh Police meals (~2,000 personnel deployed) | ~Rs8.4 million | ~Rs16.8 million |
| Punjab Police meals (~16,000 personnel deployed) | ~Rs67.2 million | ~Rs134.4 million |
| Total estimated exchequer cost (all measures combined) | — | Over Rs1 billion |
Beyond containers and police meals, Dawn’s report also pointed to hotel accommodation and transport for out-of-province officers, plus dozens of rented coasters and double-cabin vehicles, as part of the ballooning bill. Roughly 18,000 police personnel from Punjab and Sindh had already been mobilised to the federal capital, and police had reportedly held back around 2,700 commercial vehicles and their crews to prevent them from being used to transport marchers — a factor PTI cited as one reason for the transport shortage it faced.
This is the second time in five days that PakDaily has reported on developments tied to the march: on September 21, three sisters of Imran Khan were detained under the Punjab Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance days before the original date (see our report on their detention), and the party first announced the September 27 march back in mid-September (see the original announcement) demanding Imran Khan’s release. Separately on Friday, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif extended an invitation to opposition leader Achakzai for “direct talks,” though no response had been received as of filing.
Our Opinion
A week’s delay changes the calendar more than it changes the underlying standoff: the government’s security posture, running into the billions of rupees, shows no sign of easing even as the march itself is pushed back, while PTI’s own admission that it struggled to arrange transport and coordinate its allies suggests the postponement was as much a practical necessity as a strategic choice. Both sides would do well to weigh whether repeating this cycle of blanket restrictions and confrontational rhetoric every few weeks serves the public interest better than a genuine, negotiated de-escalation — the exchequer, and ordinary commuters caught behind container walls, are the ones absorbing the cost either way.
