ISLAMABAD: Former prime minister Imran Khan on Monday threatened to launch a fresh protest movement against the federal government if it did not abide by a Supreme Court ruling that polls in Punjab province be held on May 14.

Khan’s threat came a day before the resumption of talks between his opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party and the coalition government led by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, aimed at developing a consensus over a date for national elections.

“We will not sit silent if our rivals violate the constitution,” Khan said while addressing a rally from a bulletproof vehicle in Lahore to show “solidarity with laborers” on May Day and to raise his voice for what his party calls “the supremacy of the constitution.”

“The nation will come to the streets with me if the Supreme Court verdict is not implemented.”

The Supreme Court last month ruled that a decision by the election regulator to postpone polls in Pakistan’s most populous Punjab province was unconstitutional and announced elections on May 14.

Provincial assemblies in the Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces were dissolved in January by Khan and his allies in a bid to force early general elections, since Pakistan historically holds the provincial and national elections together. According to Pakistan’s constitution, elections must be held within 90 days of the dissolution of a legislative assembly.

After weeks of delays and political wrangling on the issue, the Supreme Court in a three-to-two verdict on March 1 ordered the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to fulfil its constitutional obligation and announce an election schedule for Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The ECP subsequently said the vote in Punjab would be held on April 30 but later said it was impossible to hold it in April due to security and financial concerns. It announced October 8 as the new poll date in Punjab.

Khan’s PTI party then approached the Supreme Court, which on April 4 ruled that the ECP’s postponement decision was illegal. 

General elections are due in Pakistan in October. 

Meanwhile, hundreds of PTI supporters attended May Day rallies in Lahore, Rawalpindi and Peshawar amid double-digit inflation and a sharp devaluation of the Pakistani rupee against the US dollar. Consumer price inflation in Pakistan jumped to a record 35.37% in March from a year earlier, according to the statistics bureau. The March inflation number eclipsed February's 31.5%, the bureau said, as food, beverage and transport prices surged up to 50% year-on-year.

The South Asian nation has been in economic turmoil for months with an acute balance of payments crisis while talks with the IMF to secure $1.1 billion funding as part of $6.5 billion bailout agreed in 2019 have not yet yielded fruit.

Pakistan's foreign exchange reserves have fallen to cover barely four weeks of imports.