The former prime minister and PTI fonder Imran Khan—who has now been sentenced to 14 years in cipher and 10 years in the Toshakhana reference case—entered the political arena after winning the 1992 cricket World Cup to bring tabdeeli (change) in the political landscape by launching his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) in 1996. The political journey of the ex-premier took a roller coaster ride starting from becoming the MNA in 2002 to assuming charge as prime minister in 2018 till his removal from the PM House through a vote of no-confidence moved by the then opposition alliance under the umbrella of Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM).
In a matter of two days, Pakistani courts pronounced convictions in the cipher case and the Toshakhana reference case to Imran Khan.
Let’s take a look at the key events of a former cricketer who gave up the cricketing world after winning the World Cup in 1992 entering politics and the rest is history.
In 1992, Imran Khan led the Pakistan team to its first World Cup title after defeating the England team in the final and retired the same year.
Imran Khan indulged himself in fundraising for the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Hospital (SKMH) for the treatment of cancer disease in Lahore, named after the death’s mother, who had died of cancer in 1985.
He founded his political party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), in 1996 and contested elections the next year but got less than one percent of the vote and failed to win any seats in the National Assembly. In the 2002 elections, he won a single seat in the Mianwali district.
Imran Khan boycotted the 2008 election while in the 2013 elections, PTI made government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and 2014 launched protests and sit-ins, a long march toward Islamabad alleging the elections were rigged—a claim court turned down in a famous four constituency case. PML-N famously said that the Chinese President XI postponed the then-due visit due to the sit-in in Islamabad.
The political journey and party narrative of PTI changed from tabdeeli to Haqiqi Azadi (real freedom) after Imran was removed from the PM office in April 2022. After that, the former cricketer went to the masses and claimed a cipher conspiracy along with defending no wrongdoing in Toshakhana when he was the prime minister. But in both cases, the accountability court and the special court rejected his claims and awarded him imprisonment for over a decade.
Before, May 9 occurred wherein the party was alleged to conspire against the state, and all the cases related to May 9 are sub judice.
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