Lahore March 23 (TNS): After an anti-terrorism court in Islamabad issued arrest warns for Tehreek-i-Labbaik Ya Rasool Allah (TLYR) chief Khadim Hussain Rizvi and others after they failed to show up before the court in a case related to vandalizing property and attacking security forces during Faizabad sit-in, the TLYR leadership has against warned to take to the streets from April 2 to “fight a decisive battle” for what they say not honouring the commitment the government and the guarantors had made with them to end the sit-in.
In a video message, Pir Muhammad Afzal Qadri, flanked by Khadim Rizvi and other TLYR leaders, could be heard as saying that the government has backtracked from its commitment regarding the agreement over the sit-in and instead of doing away with the cases, the TLYR leadership was being implicated in cases, which, he said was not acceptable to them and they will resist it tooth and nail.
In the video, Qadri could be heard as demanding to do away with all Abdus Salam Chair at leading universities and replacing them with chair of religious figures. The LLYR leader has appealed to his followers to converge on Data Darbar in Lahore on April 2 to thrash out a future strategy to launch a decisive movement across the country for the sanctity of the last Prophet (PBUH).
The Faizabad sit-in saga ended after over three weeks of agitation and aborted operations several times by the federal government.
The Faizabad sit-in was an all-out humiliation for the local administration and the democratically-elected government as the protesters and the stubborn TLYRA leadership kept them on tenterhooks. The whole drama came to an end after the army chief played the role of a guarantor and later an army general distributed money among participants of the protest rally and they sum was termed travel fair.
Critics say that the new move could be part of plan to put pressure on the government to end cases against the TLYA leaders, and at the same time, to garner maximum public support ahead of the general election as the party has jumped into the political fray.
