PTI marchers leave Lakki Marwat for the road toward Islamabad as containers go up

About 5,000 supporters of jailed former prime minister Imran Khan left Lakki Marwat on Sunday on a march calling for his release. The town sits in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, about 275 kilometres from Islamabad. The column paused overnight and was expected to move again on Monday. Organisers have not said the destination is the capital. The federal authorities have acted as if it is: shipping containers were stacked on key roads into Islamabad before the march had covered the distance.

Sohail Afridi, chief minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and a leader of Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, said he expected the march to reach a town about 80 kilometres west of Islamabad by Thursday. He told supporters on Sunday that the movement would by then have reached every corner of the country, and he asked people to take an active part. That timetable, if it holds, puts a political crowd within a short drive of the capital while the containers are already in place.

What the party says the talks were about

PTI said talks with the government had failed because the authorities refused a request for access to Khan, so that party leaders could consult him on national and political questions. Khan is 74. He has been in prison since last year. His wife, Bushra Bibi, was jailed with him. Concerns about his health have grown louder in recent months. The party has not published a medical report. The access demand is the stated reason the march left Lakki Marwat instead of staying in negotiation.

Past PTI mobilisations have ended in deadly violence and police crackdowns. That record is why a march of a few thousand, at this distance, is being treated as a security problem rather than a provincial rally. Five thousand is the figure given for the Sunday start. Marches of this kind often grow or shrink by the day, depending on whether district leaders join and whether police stop buses. No independent count of Monday's column was in the early reports.

The container blocks are a familiar Islamabad tactic. They do not stop a march that has not announced the capital as its end point. They do fix the government's assumption in public. Afridi's Thursday marker, 80 kilometres out, is close enough that a decision to enter or not will have to be made this week, not next month.

The province and the centre

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is governed by PTI. A chief minister expecting a march to approach the federal capital is a different political fact from a party in opposition organising a rally in a hostile province. Afridi is using the language of a nationwide movement. The federal response, so far, is road furniture and silence on the access request.

Khan remains the central name in PTI even from prison. The march does not change his legal position. It does test whether the party can still put people on a road, in his name, without a date for his release. The health question sits beside that test. If the party cannot see him, it also cannot show supporters a current medical account. That is the gap the access demand was written to close.

Lakki Marwat to a town 80 kilometres west of Islamabad is several days on the roads Afridi described, with a night pause already taken. Rain, police stops, and the size of the column on Tuesday and Wednesday will decide whether Thursday's marker is real. The containers say the capital is preparing for the case in which it is.

No fresh charge against Khan was announced with the march. The demand on the banners is release. The demand in the failed talks, as PTI described them, was a meeting. Those are not the same request. A government can refuse one and still be pressed on the other. As of Monday, it had refused the meeting, and the march had started.