ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s former prime minister Imran Khan vowed to continue his anti-government campaign during a mass rally in Islamabad on Saturday.

Khan was removed from office in a vote of no-confidence on April 10, after he lost majority in parliament.

He has since held several anti-government demonstrations across the country, saying his ouster was part of a Washington-backed “foreign conspiracy.” The US has repeatedly denied the allegations.

The ex-premier has refused to recognize the new administration of PM Shehbaz Sharif and has repeatedly called it an “imported government.”

“The nation will neither accept this American conspiracy, nor do they accept these dacoits who have been looting the nation for the past 30 years,” Khan said when he took the stage as thousands of people gathered at the Parade Ground in the Pakistani capital.

He called on supporters to defeat candidates from the ruling coalition, in the upcoming by-elections for Punjab provincial assembly seats on July 17.

“The whole nation will never accept this imported government,” he said. “In by-elections, we have to defeat them.”

Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party organized the gathering in what it said was a protest against rising inflation and fuel prices.

Pakistan’s consumer price index rose 21.3 percent in June from a year earlier, the country’s statistics bureau said on Friday, for the South Asian nation to hit its highest inflation in 13 years.

Fuel prices have risen about 90 percent since end May after the government scrapped costly subsidies in a bid to cut its surging fiscal deficit and secure resumption of an International Monetary Fund bailout program.

It was Khan’s government that had given the subsidy in his last days in power to cool down public sentiment in the face of double-digit inflation, a move the IMF said deviated from the terms of the 2019 deal.

“The prices of commodities were high in the global market during our times as well, and we were in the IMF program, but we provided relief to our public,” he said during Saturday’s rally.

Responding to his accusations, Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal said the country was suffering due to the former prime minister’s “inefficiency.”

“Seek apology from the nation,” he said, “for leaving behind a legacy of loans, deficits and inflation.”