Sept 27 Long March Will Be a Turning Point, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa CM Tells Shahdadkot Rally
SHAHDADKOT: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Mohammad Sohail Afridi has declared that political change has already begun in Pakistan, telling a large gathering of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) workers in Shahdadkot that September 27 will be a landmark day on which people “will break all barriers of fear and take to the streets.”
Addressing supporters at Main Koto Moto Chowk, the chief minister said he had carried PTI founder Imran Khan’s message to the people of Sindh. According to statements made at the public gathering, PTI’s street movement has now formally entered the province, with the immediate objective of mobilising workers and rebuilding public contact ahead of the party’s September 27 long march.
The Shahdadkot rally marks one of the most visible attempts yet to extend PTI’s protest campaign beyond its traditional strongholds in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and parts of Punjab into interior Sindh — a region where the party has historically had a thinner organisational footprint.
Afridi told the gathering that Imran Khan, who remains imprisoned at Adiala Jail, is “enduring hardships in Adiala Jail for the people’s rights, and it is our duty to stand with him.” The remark was met with sustained chanting from party workers, according to observations at the venue.
By framing the Sindh leg of the campaign around the party founder’s continued detention, PTI leaders appear to be positioning the September 27 mobilisation as a national rather than provincial exercise — an effort to convert localised grievances into a single, countrywide protest date.
In his address, the chief minister turned to provincial governance, saying the people of Sindh have faced injustices and deprivations for years. He argued that the province’s residents have been denied their due share of development and basic services, and presented PTI’s arrival in the district as a response to that neglect.
The Sindh government had not issued a formal response to the remarks at the time of filing.
PTI Sindh President Haleem Adil Sheikh and party leader Nahid Khawer also addressed the rally, adding provincial weight to the visiting chief minister’s appearance. Their presence signals that the September 27 campaign is being coordinated through the party’s Sindh chapter rather than run purely as a visiting leadership event.
Workers welcomed Afridi with traditional cultural gifts of ajrak and Sindhi caps — a customary gesture of honour in Sindh, and one that PTI’s organisers are likely to read as a favourable reception in a district long dominated by rival political forces.
Kamber-Shahdadkot has not been central to PTI’s electoral map, which makes the choice of venue significant. Political movements in Pakistan have repeatedly used interior Sindh as a test of whether a protest campaign has genuine national reach or remains confined to a regional base. A visible turnout in districts of this kind strengthens a party’s claim to speak for the country as a whole.
For PTI, the calculation is twofold: broaden the geographic spread of the September 27 mobilisation, and simultaneously apply pressure on the provincial administration on questions of development, service delivery and resource distribution.
With just over three weeks remaining before the announced date, the party is expected to continue its worker-contact drive across multiple districts. The scale of turnout on September 27 — and whether it materialises in provinces outside Khyber Pakhtunkhwa — will determine whether the day is remembered as the turning point PTI leaders have promised, or as another entry in a lengthening list of announced mobilisations.
The Lahore Times will continue to report developments as they unfold.
This is a developing story. The Lahore Times follows a strict verification and corrections policy; readers who identify an error may write to editor@lhrtimes.com.
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