PESHAWAR: Blasting the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leadership over mismanagement of the Islamabad march, senior PTI leader and former Khyber Pakhtunkhwa minister Shaukat Yousafzai yesterday said due to the party leadership’s blunders, hardships of incarcerated party founder Imran Khan were mounting.

“All the responsibility (for this) lied on the central leadership,” the PTI leader said in a statement. He asked that if the PTI founder gave instruction to hold the sit-in at Sangjani, then why it was ignored. “Strategy in politics is made by looking at the situation,” he added. The former ruling party’s “do-or-die” protest demanding Khan’s release culminated with nearly 1,000 supporters being arrested by authorities.

PTI Secretary-General Salman Akram Raja, claiming that at least 20 people lost their lives, has said that the party would approach the courts against the government, the Ministry of Interior, and the interior minister Meanwhile, Islamabad’s police chief, Ali Rizvi, denied that live ammunition had been used during the operation and said that 600 protesters had been arrested in Tuesday’s operation, bringing the total since the protest sit-in began on Sunday to 954. Yousafzai said that God gave them a great opportunity which they wasted. If they had proceeded with consultation among themselves, the results would have been different today, he added. To a query, he replied that Bushra Bibi was right to take to the streets in a bid to get her husband released from jail. “The question arises, what did the rest of the leadership do? Where was the central leadership?” he asked. It should be noted that earlier Yousafzai had questioned the leadership of Barrister Gohar Khan and Salman Akram Raja as well. He also asked where Sher Afzal Marwat and leadership of Punjab were during the protest.