JI warns of Islamabad march in mid-November if petroleum levy is not abolished
Faisal Mosque, Islamabad. (Photo: Ali Mujtaba / Wikimedia Commons)
LAHORE: Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) chief Hafiz Naeemur Rehman has given the government a blunt ultimatum — abolish the petroleum levy and give the public real relief, or face a full-scale march on Islamabad in mid-November. Speaking at a press conference in Mansoorah on Monday, he said his party had shown patience for long enough, and now the government must decide.
Rehman said a meeting with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif would take place within the next two to three days on a specific agenda. But if that meeting produced no relief, he warned, there would be no further meeting. After that, in his words, decisions would be made on the streets. He insisted the party had never refused talks — it simply saw no point in formal meetings that delivered nothing tangible.
The levy demand
JI has been demanding the abolition of the petroleum levy for more than two months. According to Dawn, the levy now stands at Rs114 per litre on petrol and Rs100 per litre on diesel. Rehman argued that scrapping the levy and cutting what he called excessive refinery margins could bring petrol down to around Rs225 per litre, and that imposing the levy was not a mandatory condition of the agreement with the International Monetary Fund.
Relief package called inadequate
The JI chief also dismissed the government’s recent relief package as inadequate. A weekly relief of Rs500 for motorcyclists and students, he said, meant little in practice, while nearly 15 million motorcyclists had been left out of the package altogether. Higher petrol prices, he argued, do not just raise transport costs — they push up the prices of food and other essentials too.
The warning follows a long round of talks. The fifth round of negotiations between JI and the government at Mansoora on Saturday ended without a breakthrough, with the government delegation asking the party to postpone its march, citing security concerns. Rehman said JI’s district-level elections would conclude by November 1, after which preparations for the march would begin in full swing. Liaqat Baloch, Dr Osama Razi, Nazir Ahmad Janjua, Javed Kasuri, Ziauddin Ansari and Shakil Ahmed Turabi were also present at the press conference.
