ISLAMABAD: Former Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan has said that he would launch a mass contact campaign next week with regard to elections in Pakistan’s most populous Punjab province, pinning his hopes on the country’s judiciary amid a standoff with the government. 

Pakistan’s top court last month fixed May 14 as the date for elections in the country’s most populous province. The landmark ruling came after days of hearing on a petition filed by Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party over the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) decision to postpone the polls from April 30 to October 8. 

Khan’s party dissolved the Punjab Assembly along with another provincial legislature it controlled in a bid to force nationwide snap polls, which Khan has been campaigning for since his ouster in a parliamentary no-trust vote in April 2022. 

On Saturday, the former premier told UK’s Sky News broadcaster that the coalition government of PM Shehbaz Sharif was “petrified of elections” as it feared the polls would wipe all other political parties out. 

“The gap between us and all the other parties is so huge now that they are petrified that they will be wiped out,” Khan said. 

“I am going to go out in public and start my mass contact from Wednesday onwards. We will carry on, hoping the Supreme Court will announce an election date in three weeks’ time.” 

The government maintains that it is not feasible for the country, which has for months been embroiled in an economic crisis, to separately hold provincial elections. Pakistan historically holds the provincial and national elections at the same time. 

But Khan said his opponents wanted to keep him out of the election race. 

“The only way they will allow elections is that I am inside jail or killed,” he told Sky News. “They want me out of the election race.” 

The Supreme Court is also expected to take up the matter on Monday as the government has failed to comply with its orders to hold Punjab polls on May 14.