Police blocked a Jamaat-e-Islami rally from staging its sit-in outside Governor House in Karachi, closing the roads leading to the building and placing containers across approaches (Dawn).
The party has said the sit-ins will continue until the petroleum levy is abolished, and warned the campaign could escalate into a broader anti-government movement.
That threat is the significant development. Until now JI has framed the protests as single-issue — fuel prices and the levy — with a specific and unmeetable demand of petrol at Rs225 a litre. Recasting them as an anti-government movement changes what the campaign is for, and puts it alongside the PTI’s planned September 27 long march on Islamabad in a month when two opposition mobilisations could overlap.
The sit-ins began on Sunday in Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar and Quetta, the next phase of a campaign that put demonstrations and road blockades at hundreds of locations on August 7. In Karachi, workers marched from across the city to Governor House, where JI Karachi chief Monem Zafar warned the Sindh government against clearing them by force: “If the government chooses the path of violence and force, it will be responsible for the consequences.”
Party emir Hafiz Naeem ur Rehman joined the Lahore sit-in at Faisal Chowk near the Chief Minister’s House, describing the levy as an “extortion tax” and a “jagga tax” and asking how many landlords associated with the PML-N had paid tax on agricultural land. He said the salaried class had paid around Rs700 billion in taxes.
The party’s arithmetic has hardened since official figures were published. The petroleum levy raised a record Rs1.567 trillion in 2025-26, up 29 per cent, underpinning a fiscal deficit of 2.6 per cent of GDP — the lowest since FY03. Over the same period diesel has risen 34 per cent year-on-year and petrol 23 per cent, with short-term inflation at 9.11 per cent.
The government has meanwhile assured goods transporters that fuel prices will move fortnightly or monthly rather than daily, an undertaking that has not been notified.
