Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Sohail Afridi’s planned address at a PTI rally in Karachi was thrown into uncertainty on Sunday as authorities blocked several key arteries across the city, causing massive traffic disruption and repeatedly delaying his arrival from Hyderabad.

Afridi’s caravan left Hyderabad before sunset but ran into roadblocks almost immediately on its route toward Karachi. The Hyderabad bypass was blocked, forcing the convoy to change course toward Kotri Bridge over the Indus, which had also been blocked by private vehicles before PTI workers managed to clear a path through. By 10pm, the caravan had still not reached the M9 Motorway toll plaza in Jamshoro, underscoring how significantly the journey had been slowed by the string of blockades along the way.

In Karachi itself, police closed or restricted traffic on several major roads following the announcement of Afridi’s expected arrival and the planned PTI rally, using containers and buses to block routes at multiple points across the city. The closures triggered severe congestion in several areas, with long queues reported along the stretch from Al-Asif Square toward Shahrah-e-Pakistan and in the opposite direction, while Shaheed-e-Millat Road, Rashid Minhas Road, MA Jinnah Road and Super Highway were all affected, leaving commuters stranded for hours during the disruption. Traffic police said personnel had been deployed at various points in an effort to keep some flow of vehicles moving, and advised citizens to seek out alternative routes wherever possible.

The disruption was not limited to traffic delays. At Numaish Chowrangi, PTI workers gathered as police attempted to prevent the crowd from congregating, and the situation escalated into direct confrontation. Police said a constable was injured after protesters hurled stones at officers, and sources said police responded with shelling to disperse the crowd, ultimately detaining five PTI workers in the process. Separately, a police spokesperson said security around the Quaid-i-Azam’s mausoleum had been tightened over security concerns, with officials confirming that no rally or procession would be permitted in its vicinity and that additional contingents had been deployed to monitor entry and exit points around the site.

Sunday marked the fourth consecutive day of Afridi’s mobilisation campaign across Sindh, part of a broader push ahead of PTI’s planned September 27 long march on Islamabad, which the party says is intended to secure the release of its founding chairman and former prime minister Imran Khan. Afridi’s day had begun far earlier and far from Karachi, with an address to a public meeting in Umerkot at around 2am, before his caravan passed through Mirpurkhas and Tando Allahyar en route to Hyderabad. Despite dug-up and blocked roads along that stretch of the route as well, the caravan reached Tandojam toll plaza and Fateh Chowk, where Afridi addressed supporters before speaking at PTI’s central rally at Haider Chowk in Hyderabad.

At that rally, Afridi urged supporters to sustain the energy shown over the four-day mobilisation campaign through to September 27, telling the crowd that the decision to call a long march had come only after the party concluded it had exhausted all legal and constitutional options available to it. Referring directly to Imran Khan’s continued incarceration, he alleged that three Islamabad High Court judges had recently directed the superintendent of Adiala Jail to permit meetings between Khan and party leaders, but claimed the jail official had disregarded that order. He also pointed to a Supreme Court order from last month directing authorities to shift Khan to Al-Shifa Trust Hospital, alleging that this order too had gone unimplemented. “This wasn’t an insult for us, but for the law, the Constitution and the judiciary,” Afridi said, arguing that even superior court rulings were going unenforced. He said that pattern had convinced PTI that only what he called public street force could now secure Khan’s release, with PTI Secretary General Barrister Salman Akram Raja and PTI Sindh President Haleem Adil Sheikh also addressing the Hyderabad gathering.

Earlier in the day, Afridi had directed sharp criticism at Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz, calling on her to apologise over recent remarks in which she said Punjab faced greater threats from neighbouring provinces than from India. Addressing a separate PTI street-movement rally in Hyderabad, Afridi accused her of holding a different view from that of the military’s own public messaging on India, and alleged that the Sharif family maintained business interests in India, going as far as to claim that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was a friend of the family, a characterisation he offered without providing supporting evidence. He further alleged that Maryam had labelled people from Sindh, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan as terrorists, saying political dynasties acting in their own interest were capable of far greater harm to ordinary citizens than any external threat.

Much of Afridi’s broader criticism throughout the day centred on what he described as four decades of governance failures attributable to Pakistan’s two largest political dynasties, the Sharifs and the Bhuttos. He cited a rise in Pakistan’s national debt from Rs42 trillion to Rs97 trillion, arguing that the burden of that increase would ultimately fall on ordinary citizens rather than on the political families he held responsible for it.

With the September 27 long march now less than three weeks away, Sunday’s chaotic scenes in Karachi, road closures, clashes near Numaish Chowrangi, and a caravan repeatedly delayed by blockades along its own route, offered an early indication of the kind of friction PTI’s mobilisation campaign is likely to continue generating with law enforcement as the party pushes further into its countdown toward Islamabad.

Compiled by the Weekly PK Staff Desk.