LAHORE: The Jamaat-e-Islami sit-in at Faisal Chowk on Mall Road has entered its 24th day, with the party announcing that the protest will continue until its demands are accepted.
Mall Road remains closed to traffic between Faisal Chowk and Regal Chowk. The closure has caused severe difficulties for commuters and traders, and has disrupted the wider traffic system in the city centre. Citizens and businesses have publicly expressed concern at the disruption to movement in and out of the commercial core.
Addressing participants in the provincial capital, JI chief Hafiz Naeem-ur-Rehman said the sit-ins were being held for public rights, not for the party’s own interests.
“We have no fondness for dharnas,” he said. “We have come out onto the streets against the injustices the government is inflicting on the people.”
He said a large number of people from Faisalabad division had joined the protest, and that Jamaat-e-Islami had never treated a sit-in as an end in itself. The party, he said, was struggling to secure relief for the public.
Hafiz Naeem said the government was extracting what he termed extortion from farmers, students and labourers. The party’s demand, he said, was unambiguous: the levy imposed in the name of the petroleum levy must be abolished. When a government team visited Mansoora, he added, the party had made clear that the sit-ins would continue.
The JI chief said the party had proposed that instead of taxing the poor, the government should tax the elite and impose levies on luxury vehicles while providing relief to low-income households.
Hafiz Naeem said the government had acted against the Constitution of Pakistan by maintaining an interest-based financial system, and that riba should be eliminated. If the government reduced interest by one per cent, he said, the national exchequer could benefit by billions of rupees.
He said more than Rs8,000 billion was consumed in interest payments rather than in retiring the principal of the country’s debt, and that the government would have to revisit its economic policies and provide relief to the public.
The petroleum levy is at the centre of the dispute because of what it is not: it is not shared with the provinces. Unlike sales tax, which flows into the divisible pool distributed under the National Finance Commission award, the petroleum levy is retained by the federal government. That makes it an attractive instrument for meeting revenue targets agreed with the International Monetary Fund, and a lightning rod for opposition parties.
Debt servicing is the single largest line in the federal budget, routinely consuming a majority of net federal revenue and crowding out development spending — the empirical core of the JI’s argument, whatever view is taken of its policy prescription.
Sentiment along the affected stretch is divided. Shopkeepers in the Mall, Regal and Beadon Road area report a sustained fall in footfall over more than three weeks, and have asked that any protest be relocated to a designated venue. Commuters navigating diversions through Egerton Road and Davis Road complain of extended journey times.
At the same time, the substantive demand — relief on fuel and electricity pricing — commands broad sympathy in a city where transport and utility costs have risen faster than incomes. The distinction most frequently drawn by residents is between the cause and the venue.
Mall Road’s status as the traditional site of political assembly in Lahore is longstanding, but so is the litigation around it. The Lahore High Court has on multiple occasions in the past decade addressed the balance between the constitutional right to assembly under Article 16 and the rights of citizens and traders to freedom of movement and trade.
-additional inputs by Hassan Ali
The Lahore Times has sought comment from the Punjab government and the district administration on the status of negotiations.
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