Karachi:

Pakistani police on Sunday detained at least two dozen supporters of jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan who tried to rally in the country’s largest city ahead of next month’s elections.

Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party has been severely hampered ahead of the February 8 vote, with rallies banned, party logos revoked and dozens of candidates disqualified.

Rights groups have warned that national and provincial elections lack credibility and the powerful military has been accused of trying to influence the vote.

PTI officials on Sunday urged supporters to rally across the country, even as police withdrew or denied permission to hold rallies.

About 2,000 people gathered in Karachi, a bustling southern port city of more than 20 million people on the coast of the Arabian Sea, where AFP reporters saw about two dozen PTI supporters detained by police and taken away in trucks.

PTI media adviser Zulfiqar Bukhari said arrests were also made in Rawalpindi, a sprawling garrison city near the capital Islamabad, and in other parts of Punjab, the country’s most populous province.

Police officials said they had no information about an arrest.

The election has been largely uneventful so far, with few large rallies — the result of a combination of party inaction, voter apathy and freezing winter weather.

Three-time Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) is expected to win the most seats, but he has barely made a presence in the campaign despite being led by another major dynastic political group Bilawal Bhutto Zardari rarely appears on the campaign trail. The influence of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) is even more pronounced.

On Sunday, he held a rally attended by thousands of people in Rawalpindi.

Journalists were summoned

Much of the action has taken place in the country’s courts, which have been at the center of disputes among politicians and parties for months, challenging everything from the use of election symbols to candidates’ qualifications to run for office.

This weekend, several Pakistani journalists, political commentators and bloggers said they had been summoned by the country’s top crime agency in response to accusations of “malicious campaigning” against Supreme Court justices ahead of elections.

They received notice from the FBI asking them to hold a hearing in the capital this week.

“This is the price one has to pay for this kind of journalism,” Assad Ali Toure, one of the journalists who received the notice, told AFP, adding that he had experienced similar situations under previous governments. case.

Farieha Aziz, a digital rights activist in Karachi, told AFP the investigation was part of Pakistan’s drive to tighten censorship.

Earlier this week, the government announced it had set up a team to “uncover the facts behind a malicious social media campaign targeting Supreme Court judges”.

Caretaker Information Minister Murtaza Solangi said more than 500 social media accounts had been involved in the anti-justice campaign, adding that “action will be taken”.

This month, PTI lost a crucial battle in the country’s Supreme Court to retain its cricket bat electoral symbol – vital in a country with an adult literacy rate of just 58%, according to the World Bank.

The sentence was considered harsh by many legal experts and was harshly criticized on social media.

In the run-up to the election, media conglomerates faced intense pressure from the establishment – a term commonly used to refer to the country’s military and intelligence services – including a ban on mentioning Khan’s name in broadcasts.

Pakistan’s military has directly ruled the country for about half of its history, and critics say it continues to maintain control over many aspects of governance.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)