LAHORE:
The Punjab government has announced that the Basant Festival will be held from February 6 to 8 after receiving formal approval for the first fully government-organized and sponsored celebration of the festival in over two decades.
The move comes amid sustained online and offline opposition to an event that remains banned by Supreme Court orders due to its historically high casualty rate.
The timing of the festival has attracted attention as it coincides with the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) nationwide protest and strike on February 8 to highlight alleged fraud in the general elections.
While critics see the overlap as deliberate, the PTI has said it will seek to capitalize on the situation rather than treating Basant as an obstacle.
PTI Punjab spokesperson MPA Brig (retd) Mushtaq said the event had been intentionally scheduled to overlap with the party’s protest call, adding, “This event has been deliberately kept within days to overlap with our protest call, but we will use this incident as an opportunity.”
Meanwhile, police sources acknowledged that the overlap posed an operational challenge, as law enforcement would have to distinguish between festival-goers and PTI protesters.
Given the threat that Basant poses to human life, the festival has come under a series of strict security barriers, chief among them a fine of Rs 2,000 on motorcycles without safety bars.
Former Jamaat-e-Islami spokesperson Qaiser Sharif claimed that despite the ban, the festival had claimed ten victims.
He said one person lost their life and nine others were injured due to stray ropes.
He added that the festival is being revived for political purposes and pointed out that the Supreme Court ban had been imposed due to deaths caused by loose threads, especially among two-wheeler users.
He said that while the government was happy to distribute safety bars for free, it did not show the same commitment when it came to helmets. He said the online survey showed people did not want what he described as a deadly festival to return.
Former Lahore PPP president Aslam Gill also opposed the revival of Basant, saying there was no point in reviving a festival that people had long forgotten. He said the event put innocent lives at stake and should have remained a memory of the past.
PTI’s Brigadier (retd) Mushtaq also opposed the revival, saying that a single human life was more valuable than the entire event.
